“I dont think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.” Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Galatians 5.22 ------------------------- Its difficult to imagine isnt it? How could a young girl living out her life in an attic, hidden away from an entire army of Nazis hunting her down and attempting to annihilate her race, speak of the beauty that remains? I rarely speak or write of it, but the Holocaust is something I contemplate often and somewhat deeply. I think we are still too close to it, to fully comprehend the rift in the human fabric this horrific event created. I could easily write for days on end regarding the various aspects Ive considered, questions Ive posed to God, and the amazing stories that have come out of that time. One of the greatest privileges Ive had in my life is to visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Tel Aviv. Going through it was a gripping journey to say the least, but the one aspect that lingers with me most poignantly is the boxcar they have displayed near the end of the hall. You cannot simply push through the museum and go from one exhibit to another at random. The hall is set up so that there is a long empty space up through the middle that is barricaded with heavy gauge wire fencing. You are forced to zig-zag from one side of the hall to the other, shuttling between exhibits on either side of the building with no direct route to the exit (and believe me, there are moments you want to look away or get away). I believe this design must have been intentional. At the end of the hall though, after youve seen all of the other exhibits, youll find yourself standing on an enormous sheet of thick glass with a mountain of shoes underneath. In front of you is a boxcar, but its not like one of the behemoths you see today. By comparison it is tiny. Then you realize that the mountain of shoes underneath your own feet represents the number of feet that had been crammed into that boxcar on its way to a concentration camp. I still remember the feeling I felt in my chest as I simultaneously made this realization and reached out to touch the boxcar. Im feeling it now as I write. Its not a good feeling. Its almost as if the horror of those years still lingers in time somewhere and can still be touched and felt. In a book of Holocaust poetry I own, there is a simple poem that was found scratched into a cave wall in France where a family of Jews lived during the war: I believe in the sun, though it is late in rising. I believe in love, though it is absent. I believe in God, though he is silent. I dont think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains. In the midst of profound evil and darkness, a little Jewish girl named Anne Frank wrote perhaps one of the most beautiful pieces of non-canonical scripture to ever come from a human soul. ...the beauty that still remains. Im not going to wrap this one up for you...I think we all need to just let our hand rest on that boxcar for a while longer in silence while we contemplate the fruits of the spirit and the power they have even in darkness...especially in darkness.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:24:52 +0000
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