Daily Devotion

“The American Episcopal priest John Gillespie Magee (1884–1953) graduated from Yale in 1906 and from 1912 served the Episcopal mission in Nanjing. During the Nanjing Massacre in December 1937 he chaired the Nanking Committee of the International Red Cross and filmed the atrocities of Japanese troops with a 16mm camera; the films were smuggled out of Nanjing and shown to foreign governments as evidence. His eldest son, John Gillespie Magee Jr., later wrote the famous poem "High Flight."”

Wikipedia · Wikipedia, "John Magee (missionary)"

Scripture

Mark 1:35 The next morning, before dawn, Jesus got up and went out to a secluded place to pray.

Reflection

In the catastrophe at Nanjing, John Magee stood his ground and risked his life to bear witness to the suffering. Where does such resilience come from? The passage takes us to Jesus praying in a solitary place before dawn. In the midst of chaos, we often face challenges wearily, forgetting to surrender in secret. True resilience is not about stubbornly clinging to life, but about retreating to the Father before dawn, like the Lord, surrendering sovereignty. Only by first surrendering our "self," trampled by God in the darkness, can we stand firm on the rock in the light.