Life is a vapor. 

One day you are seventeen and on top of the world.  A few months later you are living in a ghetto guarded by military police.  A few months later you are in a cattle car with a hundred other dehydrated people who have not slept for three days.   You finally stumble out only to be told by a whispering inmate that you are now in Poland at an extermination camp called Auschwitz.  The powers that be want you extinguished, for no other reason than you are Jewish.

This is the story of Heidi Fried The Road to Auscwitz, a compelling recollection of a story of endurance and survival.  It is still hard to imagine all of this happening in our parent’s lifetime.  It is like the world went crazy for a few years and it was not really that long ago.    

My own mother was seventeen when the war broke out and like so many others was herded onto a train and sent to Germany to work as part of Hitler’s forced labour policy.   In Hitler’s mind, Jews were to be annihilated and Poles and so many other conquered peoples were free slave labour for Germany.  

The one thing that moves me whenever I read such chronicles is that what sustains people in such times is community.  Even in the death camps, it was the relational bond between her younger sister and a group of girl friends that kept them going.   It seems that you can endure almost anything as long as you are not alone.  My mother became part of the family with whom she was billeted, even though they were Germans they shared life and the trials of war together.  The human spirit desperately needs community.   People need each other.    

The other thing that strikes me is that it will happen again.  In some places it has already happened again and is happening now.   Satan is alive and well on planet earth and his time is short.  We should not be surprised when it breaks out and we should not be surprised when the next victims will be those peculiar and hated people who insist that Jesus Christ is the only door to God. 

In can happen overnight.  It likely will happen overnight.  So Christian, don’t get attached to the things of this world.   Get yourself ready for that long dark night that will seem like an eternity.  And surround yourself with a community that really loves one another.  Become that community.

There are some that think that the church will not see tribulation.  Don’t fool yourself, we will be tried by fire.   It will happen.

The Apostle Peter writes:

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.  If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God  in that name.            1 Peter 4:12-16   ESV

Are you ready?

Les