Dear Missionaries:
This is a snapshot of me when I was a little girl. Not the one with the pitchfork and horns but the one with the ribbon on and is scared.
Fear of the devil poking his pitchfork through me and dangling me like a weenie on the end of a stick, over a pit of hell-fire and brimstone, was the nightmare of my childhood.
But now, after living over a half hundred years, I realize that the devil does not operate quite so conspicuously.
His tools of destruction do not look like this: 
; or this: 
; or this: 
; but they are like this: and this: and this: . Because he knows that what can't be seen can't be dodged. He knows that no living child of God would be caught on the prongs of his cruel pitchfork if a sound of warning could be heard beforehand.
Like the scheming wolf masquerading deep in the feathered pillows of Little Miss Red Riding Hood's gobbled up grandmother, the devil, with the assurance of his victim in sight, thinks nothing of time or waste or cost.
The loss of a soul is the very height of Satan's ambition. The loss of a soul is the very depth of God's sorrow.
Sorrow, as we understand it, is the opposite of joy, either of which comes through a series of problems calling for a continual choosing between true and false.
God, it seems, knew that our liberty to choose would prove to be a hardship because we all want joy but none of us want sorrow.
We all want the Lord's good will and all of His promises, but the way He wants us to get them does not "dove-tail" with our emotions, which get in the way and so often upset the "apple cart" of obedience.
We all know that obedience is the law of life, but we would rather God apply it to someone else.
We would choose to have all obstacles removed from our path and go "swinging along" a Sir Walter Raleigh, plush-coated trail.
When the Apostle Peter said, "Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God, commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well doing as unto a faithful creator," he was speaking in behalf of the missionaries who were more concerned with the affairs of God than of themselves.
Nor can we overlook the remarks of St. Luke when he said, "We cannot have the joys of the Kingdom of God and turn, even occasionally, to do the worldly things the world calls pleasure."
In other words, "you can't eat your cake and escape the pitchfork, too."
Love to all and Happy New Year!
Sincerely,
Hma. Julia S. Brown