Today's Daily Lesson comes from 2 Timothy chapter 4 verses 6 and and 7:
"I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith."
Today is the commemoration day for martyrdom of the apostles Peter and Paul. Though their deaths were not recorded in Scripture, tradition teaches that they were each killed under the Emperor Nero, during the same persecutions of Jews and Jewish Christians.
St. Augustine said, that though they were killed separately, we remember their deaths on the same day because their witness belongs together. Their apostleship was the foundation of the church; and their blood, as Tertullian said, "the seed of the church."
This morning's Scripture comes from one of St. Paul's last letters, just before he was killed. He knew his time was coming, and that he had not long to live. Yet, there was a deep peace within him. For he had fought the good fight, finished his race, and kept his faith.
On a day like today, I think of that old hymn "Faith of our Fathers" and its words which may be said to over-glorify martyrdom, except for the reality that the martyr's faith has always been and remains a source of strength and resolve for those keeping their own faith during the most difficult of times:
"Our Fathers, chained in prisons dark,
Were still in heart and conscience free:
How sweet would be their children's fate,
If they, like them, were to die for thee!
Faith of our Fathers! Holy Faith!
We will be true to thee till death."
Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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