You do feel privileged, don´t you, when some friend assures you that he or she prays for you.

  I´m especially touched when a babe in Christ tells me that.  He embraced the gospel in a quiet moment as you without any effort of your own passed on the good news, and now he in turn embraces you with his prayers.  Why I like that?  Because God is more than anything mindful of the prayers of His newborn children.

Another thrill that stays with me as we are about to part with this year and are pressing on to 2018, were the precious moments I spent with American school children and the look in their dear faces, their sweet perceptiveness, their smiles, their genuineness and also their healthy laughs as Christ and His healthy gospel were held forth to them.

It was sad to read in our local newspaper that the leadership in a certain school has this year cancelled a many years´ tradition of letting the children go to a brief service with Christmas carols and the Christmas gospel on their last school day before the Christmas holiday on the grounds that the children are not supposed to be "indoctrinated" or "preached to" in a school where Christianity may at the highest be treated as just a clinical "subject", but not as a joyful message and gift.
 
The kids were used to a closing celebration before their Christmas vacation, but No says now the governing atheistic body who also contends that consideration should be taken also to the Moslem children and other non-Christians.  Fortunately there came strong objections from the public, and the newspaper also gave me column space thus enabling me on that platform to "do the work of an evangelist"  (2 Tim. 4:5).

No matter what, let us encourage one another to be "more bold to speak the word without fear"  (Phil. 1:14), for you never speak so well and so eloquently as when you speak well of Christ. 

That´s my alibi for speaking your language or any language!

Dec. 16, 2017 - jn