There once was a land that was so isolated that its inhabitants believed the mountains surrounding their little valley formed the edge of the world. And for them it did. Once in a blue moon someone would venture beyond the mountains and come back with fantastic stories about what they'd seen and experienced, but their reports were routinely dismissed as fabrications and quickly forgotten.

Life in that inward-looking little land was difficult, but the people had become so accustomed to the daily struggle that most of the time they just accepted it. Life got really hard, however, when the river would suddenly overflow without warning and bury their village in mud, or their crops would mysteriously catch fire in the night, or the water from their wells made them and their animals deathly sick.

Then one day a stranger came and told them more fantastic stories about a wonderful kingdom beyond the mountains, but they laughed him to scorn. They also didn't believe him when he said that the flash floods and mysterious fires and poisoned wells were the work of a dark prince who ruled another not-so-wonderful kingdom beyond the mountains, and that he—the stranger—had come to teach them how to defend themselves against the dark prince's attacks.

After awhile the stranger left and they never heard from him again. And to this day the people of that land continue to struggle, as they always have.

Jesus is a lot like the stranger in that story, except that we will never hear the last from Him. He came to make our lives better and He's always just a prayer away.

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Art copyright TFI. Story courtesy of Activated magazine; used by permission.