From The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom:
"it is wrong to give people hope when there is no hope," he said. " It is wrong to base faith upon wishes. There will be war. The Germans will attack and we will fall. . . Oh, my dears, I am sorry for all Dutchmen now who do not know the power of God. For we will be beaten. But He will not."
A couple of weeks ago I took my Dad to the Holocaust museum in Washington DC and it was s life-changing experience. My father, being a man of somewhat sober mind suited for solving high-school level Algebra problems and playing chess with my 12-yr old son, had only minimal understanding of world history. It's hard to blame him entirely since Soviet school of thought was not encouraged and much of our own Russian history remains a mystery for the main part, more so for older generation of grandpas bred and raised on propaganda diet. The likes of my Dad prefer to stay in ignorance, it is less painful, and safer still to stay away from gruesome details of the past.
But the past is unstoppable, it is chasing us as a wave of unreconciled despair. At the museum entrance each person is given out an identification card with a name, picture and ususlly a short life story of a real person who lived during Holocaust. Mine was a Polish girl who, by tremendous survived the concentration camp imprisonment and the death march, and was reunited with her love and married right after the war. The rest of her family perished.
Hinda's miraculous survival story reminded me of another miracle that happened to my own family an. My maternal Grandfather once lived in Poland and had a decent life until the Russian pogroms scattered across captive Poland at the end of 1800's. He was one of the rebels who was arrested and exiled to Siberia where he found a wife and started a family and became successful in raising crops and cattle. He had 17 children and a large farm until Bolsheviks hadn't come out and took away all he had earned with hard labor. As if that was not enough, he was beaten to death and passed away on the bench surrounded by his family. After his death, they had it rough. Many turned to Bolshevik's ideology shattering family in pieces, which we are still trying to put together. My Mom's side of family had become bitter toward the government and life in general. Grandpa Martin's misfortune was always regarded as the root of many problems we still have in our Russian family.
Back in Holocaust museum, holding Hinda's ID card it dawned on me that the evil
Brought upon my family by Russians was still less of an evil they would have to persevere, had Grsnfpa stayed in Poland. By some divine wisdom, his seed was spared from the massacre of Polish Jews and Polish citizens. During the WWII this country has suffered the greatest human loss proportionally to its size and population. There is a good chance that we might not even come to this world if not for Grandpa's hardship and early death. Instead, they were all safely tucked in the woods of Siberia during those pivotal war years. None of his posterity has died in WWII. That's pretty much a miracle to me.
God and His power may or may not be a direct answer to our prayers, but it is always the darkest hour that precedes the manifestation of His power. And it is up to us wether we choose to see it as such or not.
Humans tend to take many things for granted. We need to be thrown off the horse from time to time and break a few bones before we can recognize the gift of our living breathing bodies and all the God-given elements that can heal it. Remember Lazarus, he had to die and be mourned by his loved ones before the incredible miracle of resurrection took place. It would not have been a Bible-worthy story if he just got sick with cold and Jesus casually healed him. But he was dead and now he walks out of his tomb - that's a miracle!
Without the refining fire there is no healing balm, there is no reaching out to Heaven, there is no conviction that the Power beyond our own can carry us through mortal journey without becoming stale with bitter blows of life.
Like these Dutch Jews and Christians that helped them during WWII - their stories should be a scripture for future generations along with other holy books. They were able to recognize the power of God transcending through life, beyond death and above religious differences. That's what makes their story so gripping. Yes for self-sacrifice, courage, unshakable character traits. But who did they draw their strength from? I want to believe and #corrietenboom testifies time and time again that it was Jesus, the one perfect Jew. #lighttheworld #thehidingplace
