Persecute me, please.

Alright. It's 1:06 a.m. and there's really no reason for me to be up so late. It' just been easier to sleep later than I usually do. Of course it all comes back to me in the morning, when I'm kicking myself for sleeping so late and struggling with all my might to get out of bed. It doesn't work until fifteen minutes before the bus comes, and I'm rushing to brush my teeth and put on clothes and eat the wonderful breakfast my mom cooked up. Why am I up again? Gosh.
Well, it was probably a mixture of NaNoWriMo writing and The Office watching. Put those two together and I could be up all night (did you know I got up to 10,000 words and watched two episodes today? Talk about productivity!) Anyways, I wanted to talk about church.

Today is National Pray-for-the-persecuted-churches Day, or something along those lines.
You know what's really, really, really sad? It's that those people who are being persecuted, those faithful and enduring spirits (God bless their souls) have more faith and more desire to serve God than we do. And they've got so much more to worry about too; their parents are threatening to disown them (or kill them) for following Christianity; their governments persecute the churches and raid them; they have hardly any leadership because it's so dangerous; they don't have many Bibles. They're banished from homes and even from churches; they're sent to jail for their belief. And you know what they say, even after all that? They say with a grin spread wide across their face how much faith they've still got in God, and how they just know that God will deliver them from their pains and toils. Yeah, they say that.

And I'm just sitting there, leaning back in that comfortable red chair, complaining about how hard it is to balance school and God and how tempting it is to steal candy from little kids. What an easy life I live. And we take it for granted, don't we? We have this absolute freedom to worship whatever the heck we want and to lift praises and prayers to God in public. And what do we do with that freedom? Nothing. We hide in our little corners, and we don't confess to anyone our faith. We're afraid of getting persecuted by our friends. But so what? That's nothing compared to getting killed by some psycho government fanatics.

Seriously? I'm ashamed of myself.