{"id":3363,"date":"2019-07-23T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/?p=3363"},"modified":"2019-07-07T17:07:41","modified_gmt":"2019-07-07T21:07:41","slug":"a-cross-in-the-sand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/a-cross-in-the-sand\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cross in the Sand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"custom-html-block\"><iframe title=\"A Cross in the Sand 7\/23\/19\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/media\/player\/96kww-b70981?from=yiiadmin&amp;download=1&amp;version=1\" data-link=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/media\/player\/96kww-b70981?from=yiiadmin&amp;download=1&amp;version=1\" height=\"122\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none;\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"auto\"><strong><u>During the years of Communist rule in the U.S.S.R., a person could be arrested for any act or statement that seemed threatening to the government<\/u>. <u>Writers, philosophers, teachers, and pastors were imprisoned for their beliefs<\/u>.   <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>During this era, Soviet author <strong><em>Alexander Solzhenitsyn<\/em><\/strong> was sentenced to eight years of hard labor in a Soviet prison camp for writing &#8220;disrespectful&#8221; remarks about Stalin in a private letter to a friend. The oppression, the humiliation by the guards, the backbreaking work in the gulag wore him down. He was ready to give up on life. <\/p>\n<p><em>One day, he wandered away from a work team and sat down. At any moment, he expected the guards to come and kill him, and he no longer cared. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Instead, an old man came and sat next to Solzhenitsyn. Picking up a stick, he drew a crude outline of a cross in the sand. <strong><em><u>And as Alexander Solzhenitsyn looked at that cross, he suddenly realized that this was his only hope<\/u>. <u>With Jesus&#8217; power inspiring him, he could survive anything<\/u>.  <\/em><\/strong>  <em><u>A God Provide<br \/><\/u><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>At that point \u2013 in the midst of a storm \u2013 he received new courage and the will to live. The storm didn&#8217;t end that day, but through Jesus, Solzhenitsyn found the strength to ride it out.<br \/><\/em><br \/>After his release from the camps, Solzhenitsyn wrote world-renowned books on the nature of freedom and faith.<\/p>\n<p><em>I don&#8217;t know what storm of life will come your way this week, or what storm you may be enduring at this very moment. <br \/><\/em><br \/><u>But I know this<\/u>: <strong><em>even as the storm rages around you, if you will listen very carefully with your heart, you will hear a gentle voice calling to you, &#8220;<u>Take heart<\/u>, <u>it is I<\/u>. <u>Do not be afraid<\/u>.&#8221; And in time the storm will pass. And Jesus will still be there for you.<\/em> <\/strong>  <em>A God Whisper<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201c<strong><em>I am with you always, even to the end of the world.\u201d  <\/em><\/strong>  (Matthew 28:20)<\/p>\n<p><em>Thanks to Johnny Dean for his sharing<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; During the years of Communist rule in the U.S.S.R., a person could be arrested for any act or statement that seemed threatening to the government. Writers, philosophers, teachers, and pastors were imprisoned for their beliefs. &nbsp; During this era, Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to eight years of hard labor in a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3362,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"qubely_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",150,150,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",150,150,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",150,150,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",150,150,false],"medium":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",150,150,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",150,150,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",150,150,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",150,150,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",150,150,false],"ocean-thumb-m":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",150,150,false],"ocean-thumb-ml":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",150,150,false],"ocean-thumb-l":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",150,150,false],"qubely_landscape":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",150,150,false],"qubely_portrait":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",150,150,false],"qubely_thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured.png",100,100,false],"rpwe-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1562526805_featured-45x45.png",45,45,true]},"qubely_author":{"display_name":"Medard Laz","author_link":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/author\/medlaz\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/category\/daily-treats\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Daily Treats<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"&nbsp; &nbsp; During the years of Communist rule in the U.S.S.R., a person could be arrested for any act or statement that seemed threatening to the government. Writers, philosophers, teachers, and pastors were imprisoned for their beliefs. &nbsp; During this era, Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to eight years of hard labor in a&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.treatsforthesoul.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}