The Gift of Life!

December 2021

For four years Emperor Theodore III of Ethiopia had held a group of fifty-three European captives (thirty adults and twenty-three children), including some missionaries and a British consul.

By letter Queen Victoria pleaded in vain with Theodore to release the captives, who were held in a remote nine-thousand-foot-high bastion deep in the interior.

Finally, the queen ordered a full-scale military expedition from India to march into Ethiopia, not to conquer the country and make it a British colony, but simply to rescue a tiny band of civilians. The invasion force included thirty-two thousand men, heavy artillery, and forty-four elephants to carry the guns. Provisions included fifty thousand tons of beef and pork and thirty thousand gallons of rum.

Engineers built landing piers, water treatment plants, a railroad, and a telegraph line to the interior, plus many bridges.

All of this was necessary to fight one decisive battle, after which the prisoners were released. Then everyone packed up and went home. The release of a few cost the British Government millions of dollars.

We have a similarly powerful force applied to our deliverance.

Jesus is God’s costly rescue program and he was designed for it, not resigned to it.

At this Christmas Season take time to look past the tinsel and carols and take a long look at the Best Gift of All that cost God the giving of His Only Son for a people who were isolated and imprisoned by sin and selfish living. Totally unable to save ourselves, our Heavenly Father was prepared to pay an immense price and His Son was equally committed to giving His everything to rescue mankind from their hopeless plight.

Merry Christmas!

David and Cherie Rodway