There are hundreds and thousands of men and women who went to work during the Covid crisis knowing their health or even their life was at stake. Heroes.

There are stay-at-home moms who do the mundane work of cleaning and diaper-changing and cooking and all the rest. They are unsung. Sometimes bored and lonely. Heroes. There are single working moms caleed to the same tasks, double duty. I get it. Heroes.

Patients in cancer wards, TB wards, and the wards of countless diseases who struggle every day with a fortitude that amazes us. True heroes.

But the stars at the top of my list have ever been and will always be, those who cannot go to work, cannot care for children, cannot get decent care in a hospital, because they are locked up in a prison cell for having served and loved Jesus of Nazareth.

The martyrs. The truest witnesses for Christ on the planet. You say, don't put them on a pedestal. They're just ordinary people. True, ordinary people, but undergoing super-ordinary suffering volutarily.

That's the key. Voluntarily. They don't have to be going through this. But their Lord went through even greater things, being the God of Heaven Himself.

I'm thinking of the lady about to be married in Turkey, whose fiance was murdered because of his faith.

And the drug addict who was delivered by Jesus, then watched as his entire family was incarcerated.

The jailed and homeless pastor in Bangalore, India.

The wife thrown out of the house in Nepal when she began to follow Jesus.

Wurmbrand, 14 years in Communist prisons.

The little girl who innocently brought her parents' Bible to her Communist school teacher, and who was subsequently taken out of her home, her parents sent to prison.

Christians in Rome who were mounted on poles and set ablaze to light the games of the Coliseum.

Wycliffe and other Bible-lovers who were sent to their death by a church/system in that same Roman town.

Men and woman burned at the stake for daring to defy the Roman "church."

Multiplied humdreds of thousands of witnesses who gave their life for Jesus. Is there a more noble set of humans who have ever lived?

So, I say to myself, Quit your belly-achin'. You have not suffered anything even near what these brothers and sisters have endured. Our aches and pains, our supposed sacrifices, our long days, they may be tough, but until we have spent a night in jail, until we have responded to a knock at the front door and faced machine gun fire, until our house has been burned to the ground by the raging fools of hell, we're probably not hero status.