“Wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” (Matthew 26:13)
When Jesus spoke those words, he was talking about a woman who had honored him by pouring perfume on his head. When I heard them recently, I thought about Cassie Bernall, a 17-year-old junior at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. How many of us would admit to being a Christian when a gun is aimed at us, knowing full well that a “yes” means death?
Well, that’s exactly what one of America’s newest martyrs did. “Do you believe in God,” one of the young gunmen asked. “Yes, I believe in God,” Cassie calmly answered. “Why?” the gunman asked as he pulled the trigger. She was dead before she ever had the chance to share more with him about her faith.
Cassie was eulogized by one of her friends as a “light for Christ”. There’s no doubt about that. Her courage has touched the hearts of millions and reminded us all that our own salvation came at a price, too.
The irony of Cassie Bernall’s untimely death is she once had a dark side. In fact, just a few years earlier, she embraced the same darkness that drove her two high school classmates to act out a kaleidoscope of prejudices by killing 13 students before they took their own lives.
But two years ago, Cassie gave her life to Christ and understood what Paul meant when he said, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) Indeed, God had changed her, so it came as no surprise to her friends to learn that Cassie was reading her Bible in the school library when the two killers arrived.
Interestingly, Cassie’s favorite movie was Braveheart, a story about a hero who dies a martyr’s death. But what really sends chills up and down my spine is a poem her brother found, written just two days before her death:
“Now I have given up on everything else. I have found it to be the only way to really know Christ, and to experience the might power that brought Him back to life again, and to find out what it means to suffer, and to die with him. So, whatever it takes, I will be the one who lives in the fresh, newness of life of those who are alive from the dead.”
Hopefully, the opportunity to physically die for Christ will not come our way. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t die for him in other ways. We can pay a little closer attention to the video games that our kids are playing, the Internet sites they are frequenting, and the magazines they are reading. We ask them to say, “No” to drugs. Perhaps as parents we should learn to say, “No”, a little more, too!
I agree with something Franklin Graham said during last Sunday’s memorial service. At the moment Cassie’s killer pulled that trigger she went immediately into the presence of the Lord Jesus because the Bible says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. And I know this, too: When Jesus saw her, he said, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Now enter into the joy of your Lord.” (Matthew 25:23)
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