Gabriel's Story

Today during my quiet time, God gently reminded me of a story that I wanted to share. Some of you may remember Gabriel Iancoluvich. Gabriel was a foreign exchange student who lived with Lance and his family for a few years while we were in college. He was here from Romania to attend Lamar. Believe it or not, his dad (who was born and raised in Romania) was a Southern Baptist minister. Gabriel loved the Lord, and one day he told us a story that I will never forget.

He said that during the late 80s and early 90s, Romania was involved in terrible civil struggles. It was not uncommon for fighting to break out in towns across the country when community leaders disagreed. One day, near his home, his dad witnessed a terrible scene.

A young boy was playing with a small ball toward the back of his house, which met up with the side of the town's square. The ball rolled out into a paved area between some shops in the square, as there were no fences. The boy followed the ball, but as he ran after it, he found himself in the middle of a skirmish. He was caught in the crossfire and fatally wounded. His father ran out of the house when he heard the gunfire erupt to retrieve his son and bring him safely inside. But it was too late, he saw his son only 50 yards away, laying prostrate on the ground, his blood pouring out.

The small skirmish concluded as quickly as it had begun, and people had already gone on to move about their business. They had become so accustomed to such activity that they seemed hardly shaken. But the father rushed to his boy's side, picked up the small child in his arms, and screamed to the crowd, "Get off my son's blood! You are walking in my son's blood!"

Gabriel said that when God first brought him to America, he thought of that story and how seeing blood had become so ordinary for his people that watching the boy die made little impact on their daily life. He also said that he believes Christians in this blessed country are guilty of the same, but on a larger scale.

We go safely each week to our air-conditioned sanctuaries to be filled with the Gospel message, a message that many of us have heard all of our lives. Some of us may even feel entitled to being made to feel good on Sunday or to certain rights we feel as Christians we deserve, like the right to worship to a certain type of music or the right to meet in a certain room or place.

If we are fed with the Living Word and the Saving Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who loved us so much that He poured out His blood for us, but we do nothing to show that His sacrifice has impacted our lives, then brothers and sisters, WE ARE WALKING ON HIS BLOOD.

We do not deserve His love or His grace. We do not want what we deserve. But because He loves us so much, God watched His son bleed for our sins on a hard wooden cross. Today as this message ways heavily upon my heart, God I repent of complacency and self-righteousness that have left me walking through Your Son's blood. I do not want to live as I am unaware of the great sacrifice or untouched by the grace through which I am saved. Instead, I want to do whatever you ask, whether easy or hard, because you loved me first.