Thousands of people assembled at the Gwinnett Fairgrounds last weekend for the annual Relay For Life to benefit cancer research. I did not get to participate, but our dear friend, Suzette, who battled breast cancer last year (and is now cancer-free), told me about it. The first lap is reserved to honor cancer survivors and their caretakers. Suzette had a hard time describing the emotions she felt as the huge crowd applauded and cheered during this “victory march”. Perhaps this was a small picture of the verse: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”<\/p>\n
There’s an interesting passage in Ephesians that gives a glimpse of another “victory march”. In the days of old when a king conquered another city, he would lead a procession of prisoners back to his kingdom. As the captured enemy and the spoils of war were displayed, a powerful message was sent to all: “I am victorious! This was my enemy, but now he is my subject! Behold!” As Paul shares that “every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ”, he portrays Jesus as the true champion who, after defeating death, ascended on high, and marched in triumph as a mighty conqueror. “When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men.” (Eph 4:7-8)<\/p>\n
While the angels celebrated as Jesus took His place in Heaven, we take great hope that His “victory” is still in process. “For he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (I Cor 15:25-26) How amazing it is that He invites us to participate with Him!<\/p>\n
“Oh victory in Jesus, my Savior, forever. He sought me and bought me with His redeeming blood. He loved me ere I knew Him, and all my love is due Him. He plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thousands of people assembled at the Gwinnett Fairgrounds last weekend for the annual Relay For Life to benefit cancer research. I did not get to participate, but our dear friend, Suzette, who battled breast cancer last year (and is now cancer-free), told me about it. The first lap is reserved to honor cancer survivors and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hope"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1505,"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions\/1505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airwoof.org\/journey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}