"Entering the House of Love"

Those of you who are familiar with my blog postings will realize that the theme of "home" looms large in them. My first blog post introduces the topic, and there are at least a dozen posts in which I write about it. Probably this has to do with being uprooted from my original place of birth in Ukraine when I was just a few months old, and then travelling for four years with no place to call home. 

I think "home" became the place wherever my parents were, where I was loved, accepted and protected. I always had that, and am ever so grateful for it, especially as I realize so many in our world don't. 

People should not have to fight for their right to be appreciated and loved! 

Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021, raised in Soviet-controlled East Germany, realized this in her political career. Frequently referred to as the "most powerful woman in the world," the 61-year-old chancellor met a 14-year-old refugee girl with cerebral palsy who just wanted to stay in Germany and have a normal life. The young girl wept as she said this to Merkel, and something in Merkel resonated and responded. In 2015 Merkel announced "Germany will not turn away refugees". She was told that "to allow one million strangers into Germany is to endanger German civilization." Merkel replied, "I had no choice." Daughter of a Lutheran pastor, this was "her Martin-Luther moment," writes Kati Marton in her political biography The Chancellor.

Merkel took a risk, jeopardizing her political career. She never turned back. 

"In the house of God's love," writes Henri Nouwen, "we come to see with new eyes and hear with new ears and thus recognize all people, whatever their race, religion, sex, wealth, intelligence, or background, belong to that same house. God's house has no dividing walls or closed doors."

What "dividing walls" and "closed doors" have you encountered? How did you deal with them?

I Lost It !

Years ago Hardy gave me a big Bible -- Good News, Colour-Reference Edition. I bought a leather cover with a zipper for it. It has always been my "go-to" Bible for help when I prepare for Bible studies, Sunday School teaching, worship leading, or preaching.

Recently I used it for writing  a set of devotionals. The topic was the prodigal son who wasted his inheritance in extravagant living, was "lost" and returned home to be "found" and welcomed by his father. Just before the story of the prodigal son, Jesus tells several other stories about lost things: salt that has lost its flavour, a sheep that is lost, and a woman who loses a coin (Luke 15).

After spending some time pondering the meaning of these stories, I replaced the Bible on the bookshelf and went on to something else. I soon realized I had left my phone in my office and went downstairs to get it. I saw the charging cord lying on my desk, but the phone was not there. Like the woman looking for her lost coin, I looked in every room of the house, but to no avail! Finally I called husband Hardy who is usually better at finding things than I am. Nothing turned up! 

I finally realized that there is a call button on the phone, which I can activate with my iPad. Sure enough, I heard a faint "ding-ding" downstairs. It was coming from my bookshelf. Both Hardy and I moved books back and forth, but I told him I know for sure I didn't have the phone near the bookshelf. Then I touched my Bible and felt a vibration. "What??" You guessed it, dear reader! My phone had been lying on top of the open Bible. Not realizing this, I had closed the Bible, zipped it shut with the phone still in it and replaced it on my bookshelf!

My blogger friend, Marian Beaman, once wrote about finding her glasses in the freezer, a long time after she gave up looking for them. This is one of those stories. I'm tempted to extrapolate a meaning from this event but I won't! Instead I will point you to several books I'm reading to chase away the January and February blahs. They are also about what is lost, but much more traumatic in the losses they describe than the one I experienced.

                         

I went to hear Sarah Klassen read from her newly published book (The Russian Daughter, which I received as a Christmas present) and was quite amazed at this ninety-year-old retired English teacher, fielding questions with clarity and insight, never mind that she had just written a novel! Her interviewer, a fellow teacher, must have been about the same age. These two women give me hope!
Klassen shared with her readers that her novel was inspired by a story her mother told her when Sarah was a teenager. She hadn't been that interested at the time but the story stayed with her.

Like Klassen, Wiens listened to and collected many stories while preparing to write To Antoine. He carefully researched them and produced a novel that is searing in its recounting of a life first lived in a Mennonite village in Ukraine during the Stalinist era. He goes on to describe his protagonist's young adulthood among genocidal Nazis, his sojourn in Paraguay, and his later judgement as a war criminal. This is a book not easily set aside!

I wish you, my dear readers, the ability to live graciously with the losses you experience in life; to listen to stories and tell them to those nearest and dearest; to live with love in your hearts, not only during this month of love, but throughout the year!