One of the side benefits of traveling to visit our fellow
missionaries in Europe has been the opportunity to do a little
sightseeing. The Pont du Gard was built
sometime in the first century A.D. as part of an aqueduct that brought water to
the Roman colony of Nemausus (present day Nimes, France).
This impressive structure is still
standing after two millennia, a testimony to the Roman engineers and
construction workers who built it. 
The protestant evangelical
church in Europe is still standing, too.
Despite hundreds of years of persecution and the twin scourges of Nazism
and Communism, the tiny evangelical church remains. It is tempting to bewail her present weak
condition and find fault with her for failing to win the continent back to
Christ. I’d rather praise God for her
faithfulness. She has weathered the
storms and endured the trials. In many
countries here she has been an outcast for centuries, always in the minority,
always marginalized, but continuing to hold fast. 
As the church in America
struggles with the hostility of her culture, the loss of her freedoms, and the marginalization
of her ideas, perhaps we could learn a thing or two from our European brothers
whose faith, by God’s mercy, has lasted.
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