“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more,” (Matthew 2:18).
There is always a moment in a vacation when you feel that the experience transcends sightseeing and reaches the level of real learning.
It happened in Krakow, Poland, a couple of weeks ago. I stood at the Jewish Ghetto Memorial and felt the emotional weight of what happened there, and I could not help myself; I cried.
Each large, metal chair represents a thousand adult victims; each small chair for one thousand children. There were dozens of them. Krakow’s Jewish community was rounded up and herded into the ghetto as a holding place prior to extermination.
Trains came to take the people either to labor camps or extermination centers; both had the same end game. Many, especially children and the elderly, were simply shot where they stood.
Most of us know this story … academically. But standing in that place with our beautiful, vibrant, joyous grandson, I found myself thinking about families like ours. Children watching their mothers murdered and their fathers herded into cattle cars. A grandfather witnessing unspeakable atrocities before being murdered himself. I see those small chairs and the brutal end for so many children, and I begin to cry.
I cry because: A) The older I get the more things seem to touch me; B) too many people talk as if ‘rounding people up’ is a good idea; and C) we are so easily blinded by hate and by misinformation.
Hate does blind. The saying ‘love is blind’ is not true; love typically sees clearly. This is what makes love so powerful; this is what makes love so costly.
But seeing clearly does hurt. The truth is that we are broken and lost and in need of grace. I saw all that in Krakow and a lot more — more than enough for this post. Never forget the tragic and terrible consequences of forgetting Christ’s instruction to love our neighbors as ourselves.
In love, and because — ultimately — it is love that will save us.
— DEREK