“BE OF GOOD CHEER”

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14 

“In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” Jn16:33 NKJV 

Dr. Ashley Montagu met two young men shortly after the end of World War II. They had spent two years at Auschwitz, the cruel death camp operated by the Nazis. Prior to Auschwitz, they lived in Vienna in a cellar where they had been kept hidden by Christian friends. All of the others housed there with them had bee found and exterminated because they were Jews. After the war ended, these two men walked from Vienna to Berlin, hoping to find relatives there. They were picked up by an American Jewish soldier, who brought them to America. Both of them wanted to become physicians, and that’s how Dr. Montagua, professor in a medical school, came to meet them. Noting that they “didn’t exhibit any of the scars that one might have expected from their unhappy existence,” he asked them how they came to be such cheerful people. They replied, “A group of us decided that no matter what happened, it wouldn’t get us down.” They told him they had attempted to be cheerful regardless of their circumstances, never yielding for a moment to the idea that they were either inferior or doomed. Dr. Montagu said, “They are living proof that even under impossible conditions, it’s possible to be happy.” Solomon said, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength” (Pr 17:22 NLT). Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” So this is the word for you today: “Be of good cheer.”