Like many folks, I look back at incidents from my teenage years and wonder, “What in the world was I thinking?”

On a school trip halfway across the state for a track meet, I reached over the back seat of the school bus to grab something from the back only to discover that the principal’s kid and his girlfriend were behind the seat, half undressed, making out. 

They saw me. I took off, probably as embarrassed as they were. I wouldn’t have said a word, but they didn’t know that. The kid I startled and three of his buddies chased me down and gave me a pounding, warning me that I would get worse if I told what I saw. They gave me a busted lip, a black eye, and broke the nose piece of my glasses. 

Though I haven’t thought of that incident for a long time, I thought about it a lot in my teen years. In my imagination, I fought those bullies a thousand times, and each time I was brave and strong and skilled in marshal arts or boxing. Of course, it was to never happen like that outside my mind. Life is often much different than the movies. 

I am not saying that those boys, now men close to retirement age, deserve to face judgment for their bullying; there is a selfish part of me that thinks their deeds should be judged, but that is between them and God. There are, however, a great many people around the world, a few of which contact me me regularly asking for prayer, who face far greater persecution. They are not persecuted because they are skinny little wimps like I was. They are persecuted for being Christians. 

It is a comfort to know that those hidden things, atrocities done in the darkness of sin, persecutions hidden from the world… vile acts ignored by others… those things that mankind do because they love darkness more than light…

Those things – all things not covered by the bliss of the Lamb – shall be exposed in the light of God’s truth and judged by Jesus Christ.

So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.