I don’t know what thoughts of elation crossed your mind on hearing the news this morning that Dr. Meriam Ibrahim arrived in Italy today a free woman at last after she and her two children had been held in captivity in a Sudanese prison for her Christian faith. She had given birth to her daughter, Maya, while shackled after having been given a reprieve from a death sentence. Yet during her entire almost year-long ordeal she refused to renounce Christ and held fast to her God. Now she and her children, having already been reunited with her husband at the American embassy in Sudan, will soon be in his New Hampshire home.

As Christian persecution ramps up across the world, moments like these seem rare and hard to find. But let us praise and give thanks to our God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gives us the victory in Christ to triumph over every adversity, even death itself, by faith in Him.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39 ESV)