“I can see the sun!” I shouted at the top of my voice, startling a number of small lizards and sending them fleeing. I rushed downstairs and opened both the front and back door of our new apartment. “I smell the air, too!” The foul odor that hit my nose didn’t bother me at all. I felt like a brand-new person. Praise God!

For the previous few months, I had been constantly ill and couldn’t put my finger on the cause. I accepted my illness as hay fever due to the changing of the seasons. After all, the rainy season had just started.

We were living in a very dark apartment. There was only one back door, and it led directly to the house behind ours, so it didn’t allow in any fresh air. The front of the house was on the main road coming into the city. Our neighbor had a restaurant where students stopped for breakfast, listened to loud music and exchanged all the news from the previous night’s party. Some regulars spent the whole day drinking beer and smoking right outside our door. Needless to say, no fresh air was coming in from there, either. We slept on the windowless second floor, which shielded us from the constant traffic noise.

When we recently moved to another apartment, one with quieter surroundings and more windows, I suddenly realized that my mysterious ailment was gone. As I thought back on our previous home, shivers shot down my spine. I hadn’t realized that my environment had such a negative impact on me until I changed it. I thought about the many precious people trapped in bad environments, unaware that they are lost. But Praise God, He has the power to fill them with the atmosphere of heaven and give them new life.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.” Let us pray for the unreached and ask God to change us daily for His glory!

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