May 10

“Your joy no man taketh from you.” (John 16:22)

In the second century, they brought a martyr before a king, and the king wanted him to recant and give up Christ, but the man spurned the thought.

The king said: “If you don’t do it, I will banish you.”

The man smiled and answered: “You can't banish me from Christ. He says He will never leave me nor forsake me.”

The king got angry, and said: “Well, I will confiscate your property and take it all from you.”

And the man replied: “My treasures are laid up on high; you cannot get them.”

The king became still more angry, and said: “I will kill you.”

“Why,” the man answered, “I have been dead forty years; I have been dead with Christ; dead to the world. My life is hid with Christ in God, and you cannot touch it.”

And so we can rejoice, because we are on resurrection ground, having risen with Christ. Let persecution and opposition come. “Your joy no man taketh from you.”