breaks my heart

lately I've been thinking about what breaks my heart. What are the things I'm so passionate about that I would lay my life down for? I'm sitting here watching a PBS program on life inside china. This episode is about freedoms in china. When you live there, you hear the "party message" and experience the red tape every day, but you almost become used to it. Just start to think of it as life as normal forgetting that it is not normal, or just.

They just showed a clip of a raid on a house church. The police (psb) take those who were meeting out into the street and start beating them. They then bulldoze the house. Just because they were choosing to worship in their homes and not in a registered church.

I never experienced persecution. Some of my friends did. Getting pressure to join the party, and stop meeting with us (second to needing to study, joining the party was the answer we most often got when our friends stopped calling us). Those who did choose to study with us would have to hide their bibles and study in secret. They know the cost of following Him. It is so real to them but still they shared His truth with their classmates. Trying to feel out who would be interested and who would turn them in to the class monitors. They share boldly knowing what will most likely happen if anyone finds out they're a Christian. And their friends are believing, and telling others, and they are believing and the Church is growing. And it's beautiful.

China definitely breaks my heart. Everything about it. The people, the language, the culture. The void in their eyes and their answers when you ask them what they love, what they're living for. How can you not love them? How can you look at them and the smile they're pushing through and not die inside at the hopelessness of their lives without Jesus?