I Really Cannot Forget

I just came in from my third visit to Israel this morning feeling great…(maybe a little tired of the travel, that’s all!).

What a refreshing time just to sit and hear God’s Word, to be washed in this Water of Life that rejuvenates and revives your soul and spirit.

And then to see with your eyes the land of the Bible.

Now don’t get that ‘all-romantic’ goose-bumpy feeling about Israel. I love the Lord immensely and it is wonderful to see where Jesus actually walked and spoke and did miracles. It kind of not only opens your understanding about Israel but also gives you a better grasp of the Bible as you read it. But I’m not romantically in love with Israel and the Jews. I love them because God loves them…same as He love everyone as He says in John 3:16. But I’m intrigued about how God chooses a city out of all the millions of cities in the world. And I’m intrigued about the same God who says to every human kind…you must be ‘born again’…not in your own way, but in the way He says so in the Bible! And He says it to both Jew and Gentile…hey that’s us!

But what really hit me deep on the insides was the Yad VaShem Holocaust Memorial at Jerusalem. It was exceedingly poignant and left me speechless for over an hour.

Most of the Memorial is underground. We walked past the memorial pillars and entered single file in the semi-darkness of thousands of reflections of flickering candlelight…past children’s photos. I had to hold on to the side railings to find my way in and out. The names of these children their ages and their country is heard with clarity. I walked with a lump in my gullet and sadness in my heart as I looked at those precious photographs. It could have been my children or grandchildren.

How real was the Holocaust, and that too what demon-possessed men would kill 1.5 million children, experimenting on them, breaking their bones and testing their little bodies? In the end sending them to gas chambers. Children!

For surely the majestic sculpture outside by Boris Saktsier says it all. The true story of how Korczak ran an orphanage in a Warsaw ghetto. He was given the chance to flee in exchange for the children he was caring for. Korczak refused to leave about 200 little children. He went with them to the concentration camp and eventually met death along with them in the Treblinka death camp. What gripped me again was the sculpted expression on the face of Korczak, and his arms around the little children.

May we never forget the sacrifices of real men who gave their all for what they believed in spite of the onslaught of evil

And so in truth there IS something about this land.

I cut myself off from everything for these past two weeks. I sat under the teachings of simple men, who have a profound God, this God who says marvelous things to us. I’ve come back with many precious lessons.

But what’s so burned in my memory forever, never to go away is just two vital things.

One. Teach the ways of God to our children. They are our future and hope.

Two. History teaches us that hate can destroy and devastate. Learn to love with God’s love.

Hey! We have memorials all over the world. Every one of them tells us to change our ways.

Will we ever?

Just like I held on to the railings in semidarkness at Yad VaShem, let’s hold on to the Truth to lead us into real Light.