A time for war and a time for peace. - Ecclesiastes 3:8
It was a time of war. I was small, very insignificant, and extremely frightened. I sat on a little stool, looking up into the darkening sky at the searchlights seeking shapes—sinister shapes of war and hate and death. I didn’t understand why the shapes might drop bombs.
My mother explained that an evil man called Hitler was trying to conquer the world, and someone had to try to stop his gobbling up all the nations on the globe. Then I dimly understood that sometimes there’s a time for war.
After it was all over and I was grown and at college, I came across a book of photographs that had been taken in places called Belsen and Auschwitz. Then I understood more fully why I had had to run into the air-raid shelter, why my daddy had had to fight, and why my friend’s uncle had been killed.
Now I am middle-aged, and it’s a time of peace. My Bible instructs me to pray for peace in our time. If there is peace, we can attend to God’s work and try to reach the half of our world that has never once heard about the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. When we live in a time of peace, we don’t need to spend every waking moment in the business of survival. We can attend to those in the grip of an enemy worse than Hitler—Satan himself, who would gobble up people’s souls. We can spend time caring for souls. We can fight the devil, for there is a time for war!
For Further Study: Ecclesiastes 3:9-13
Excerpted from The One Year Devotions for Women, Copyright ©2000 by Jill Briscoe. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.
For more from Jill Briscoe, please visit TellingtheTruth.org.
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