American left a mess over in Afghanistan. The chaos on the ground is reportedly incredible. We must pray for these dear people—those fellow Americans, fellow Afghanistan Christians, and Afghan allies. Dads, moms, children, grandparents, uncles, aunts—people just like you and me.

Editor’s Notes: The following update on Christians in Afghanistan comes from a report from Jim Geraghty a senior political correspondent of National Review. He reports on Jean Marie Thrower and others whose groups are currently volunteering in Afghanistan. Thrower is a former U.S. Army’s 82 Airborne Division transportation officer, who left her job to work with the Afghan Rescue Crew (ARC), a private group of U.S. veterans and civilians volunteering to save as many left behind Americans and vetted Afghans as possible. My notes are in italics below, the rest is from Geraghty.
Update on Christians in Afghanistan—Geraghty Writes:
The good news for ARC is that they have so far rescued “hundreds” and transported them to third countries safely. The bad news is that the organization says that it has a list of thousands of at-risk Afghan allies still in its system. Thrower disputes the U.S. State Department’s characterization of about 100 Americans being left on the ground; she said that as of a few days ago, the figure her group had was closer to 1,000 — although she noted that every group making a rescue effort has its own list, potentially leading to overlap with one another in certain cases. The 1,000 figure may include U.S. green-card holders, too, which the State Department is putting in a separate category. The Taliban continues to call people to tell them they are coming for them. My guess is to both keep them in fear and hoping they will make a mistake while they systematically go about searching for and finding them. Thrower said that her organization has moved a certain number of endangered Afghans to safe houses, and is essentially telling them to stay in place until further notice. “But they’re running out of food and water. They’re afraid to leave the house for the past ten, twelve days. But the cost — the cost is, for some of our groups, $10,000 to $15,000 a week. We have people in our organization paying, and I’m sending them money through Western Union. If I don’t give them money, they won’t be able to stay in this hotel for another week.”
Conditions on the Ground

Thrower reports that her organization has “people who are going missing and getting killed every day.” Her group hears accounts from Afghans who made it out, as well as the horrifying accounts they’re told by those who were left behind.
She describes the case of an American child whose Afghan uncle was recently killed by the Taliban. “We have had people shot, beheaded. They’re taking the kids. If you’re on the run, and they find your family, they’ll hurt your family and put the word out in the neighborhood that ‘we’ve got your brother or son or daughter.’ They cut off the heads of two boys that were nine and ten.”
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I don’t read through the Bible for knowledge particularly, although I will come across something I hadn’t noticed before or perhaps had forgotten. I read devotionally, that is, devoutly in communion with the true and living God whose word it is, and devotedly to Him who has taken me for Himself. In reading, I am reminded, refreshed, nourished, and renewed in the grace and knowledge of my Lord Jesus Christ. 

Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law. (Psalm 119:18, NKJV)
Today is December 31, my final day of reading through the Bible in a year*, something I’ve done for the bulk of my Christian life. There is a certain satisfaction to completing the course and a marked anticipation to beginning anew the daily reading of God’s Word.
As a pastor who preached weekly, much of my time in the Bible required a deep dive. Reading and praying over a text. Exploring the original languages. Consulting commentaries. Reflecting, refining, and relaying. In other words, preaching required rigorous study with an eye to communication.
My reading through the Bible in a year, however, is different. It’s devotional rather than didactic, personal rather than pastoral. My goal is not to study the text, although that happens as the Spirit opens my eyes to content, context, and connections. These observations may lead to teaching occasions.
But my goal in daily Bible reading is devotional. I meet with God to open His Word and I open my heart to receive it. I see His character and His hand as I read – His might, providence, love, wisdom, mercy worked out in His dealings with His people. Seeing that, I respond with a continuous sense of wonder, punctuated with words of praise or thanks or lament.
Sometimes the Spirit will arrest my reading and lead me to reflect on a passage or a word or a phrase.
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In mercy, God vents his just wrath on Christ as our substitute and does not give us what our sins deserve saying, “‘whosoever believes in Him shall not perish,’ for Christ perished in your place!” Though mercy is a gospel all by itself, worthy of the endless praises of men and angels, in Christ, God gives more grace saying, “whosever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life!” You see, if mercy is not receiving what is deserved, then grace is receiving that which is undeserved. 

One day, during my senior year of high school, I noticed someone in the gym I’d never seen before. He was a juggernaut of a man I assumed to be a trainer, brought in to work with the football team. Turns out, he was brought in to work with the team but as the new quarterback. It was a 16-year-old named Timmy Tebow. Nobody knew him then, but we all know him now! We know him for championships, broken records, Heisman trophies, NFL highlight reels, and bestselling books.
But I think his greatest feat took place on January 8th, 2009, when he led the Gators to a championship victory with “John 3:16” written in silver sharpie on his eye blacks. He later told reporters that he chose John 3:16 because it was “the essence of our Christianity and the essence of our hope.” Astonishingly, 94 million people Googled “John 3:16” during the game and read the good news for themselves: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Luther agreed, hailing John 3:16 as “the Gospel in miniature,” and Spurgeon called it “the North Star of Scripture.” It’s one of the first verses we teach our children at the start of life and one to which we cling at life’s end. We see it everywhere from billboards to bumper-stickered tailgates and tattooed forearms. But frequent handling causes callouses. Perhaps, John 3:16 has become to you like the patinaed engagement ring with a dusty diamond, worn everyday but scarcely looked at. How beneficial then, to shine the gem and remind our forgetful hearts that God gave his Son for us because he loved us.
The God of Love “For God so loved the world…”
This good news wasn’t trumpeted by Jesus during a mountain-top sermon but late one night after Jerusalem’s Passover crowds had ceased, to a pharisee named Nicodemus. To Pharisees, God was chiefly a master who commands, an inspector who scans, a judge who renders a verdict, an executioner who punishes, not a Father who loves. But the love of God and the God of love was first and foremost in the heart of Jesus.
There are four Greek words translated as “love”: philia, the love of friends; storge, the love of family; and eros, the romantic love of a spouse. But here, Jesus chose the greatest, agape love to express God’s divine motivation in the salvation of sinners. The Bible says God’s agape love is: a sovereign love in which, “God predestined us for adoption to himself” before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:5); an unbreakable love which “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation” can sever (Romans 8:38-39); a great love by which he “made us alive together with” Christ when we were dead in sin and trespasses (Ephesians 2:4); an infinite love whose breadth, length, height and depth surpass all knowledge (Ephesians 3:19); and an unconditional love shown in that “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10).
There are two tragic mistakes we make regarding God’s love. First, we misprioritize God’s love and see it as one grape in the cluster of his attributes, forgetting that “God is love” (1 John 4:8 & 16). Harry Ironside said, “[Love] is his very nature. We can say that God is gracious, but we cannot say that God is grace. We can say that God is compassionate but we cannot say that God is compassion. God is kind, but God is not kindness. But we can say, God is love.” Can you say that? Or have you exchanged the Bible’s God of love for the cold, grey deity of the pharisee? Yes, we must press on to know God’s eternal power, holiness, and justice but we must remember that it is only by God’s love that he is these things for us! God’s love is the bridge by which he comes to us to rescue us from our sins for himself.
We also misplace the love of God, putting love at the end of the salvation equation as a product; believing that Jesus bled and died for our sins to make God love us. But Christ puts God’s love at the beginning of the equation as the chief factor, saying, “For God so loved the world he sent his only begotten son.” That means the cross of Christ is not the place God started loving his people, but the ultimate sign of his love for them which had been burning in his breast for all eternity. “Love,” wrote Thomas Watson, “made Christ suffer for us, love was the chain that fastened him to the cross.” This love Spurgeon said, “flows from its own secret source in the eternal Deity, and it owes nothing to any earth-born rain or rivulet; it springs from beneath the everlasting throne, and fills itself full from the springs of the infinite. God loved because he would love.”
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