God. Real. Right.

I normally do not post along these lines, but need to this time. Two years ago, and again two years before that I had the privilege of traveling to India with a medical mission team organized by Doctors Janet and Sonya Merrill. While there in Orissa (south of New Delhi on the Bay of Bengal), I had the privilege of serving and becoming friends with a pastor-leader in the area named Soubhagya Nayak. Some pastors who serve under him shared with me the story of when he was kidnapped, beaten, and threatened with death by militant Hindus trying to provoke him to recant his faith. The event happened in the year between my two trips to the area. For hours he was held, beaten, and threatened, but he did not recant. The Lord gave grace, his captors became divided, and he was finally released. His friends told me how delighted they were when he came back to them.
Today I received an e-mail from him describing the outbreak of widespread violence against Christians there. The violence was always threatened, the tensions always present, so I am not surprised by the report–not surprised, but very disturbed. (I have left each correspondence unedited.)

Dear brother,

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