Daily Reading for September 2 • The Martyrs of New Guinea, 1942
Whether on the battle front, or in desolate displacement camps, believers experience the numinous, healing, recreating presence of God. God is unreservedly the God of salvation revealed in the One who has passed through death and now abides among his people. The diversity of this Church is both its strength and its weakness, its hidden wealth, and its fragmentation. We close with an acclamation from one of Sudan’s most popular vernacular hymns:
Let us give thanks.
Let us give thanks to the Lord in the day of devastation;
and in the day of contentment.
Jesus has bound the world round
with the pure light of the word of his Father.
When we beseech the Lord and unite our hearts and have hope,
then the evil power has no strength.
God has not forgotten us.
Evil is departing and holiness is advancing,
these are the things that shake the earth.
From “Death has Come to Reveal the Faith: Spirituality in the Episcopal Church of the Sudan Amidst Civil Conflict” by Marc Nikkel, in Anglicanism: A Global Communion, edited by Andrew Wingate, Kevin Ward, Carrie Pemberton, and Wilson Sitshebo. Copyright © 1998. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY.www.churchpublishing.org