Issue link: http://denverseminary.uberflip.com/i/1314061
14 FROM DIVIDED TO UNITED Isaiah 40:9-11 Earlier this year I read the engrossing biography of Pastor Mar tin Niemoller, put into a concentration camp for his opposition to Hitler's policies. Christmas 1944, the Dachau authorities, after denying Protestant prisoners the right to worship, relented and ordered Niemoller to conduct a service. "There were seven of us," he writes, "a British colonel, a Dutch minister of war, two Norwegian ship-owners, a Yugoslav diplomatist and a Macedonian journalist, and me, the Lutheran pastor from Germany. When I realized what a task I should have to fulfill, I felt embarrassed and even desperate; for how should I—the German—find the right way to the hear ts of this congregation, to men who hated Germany, and Germans, and who could not do otherwise? But a sor t of minor miracle happened. As Niemoller recorded: At noontime before Christmas Eve somebody knocked at my door. The cell was opened, and in came the Dutch minister of war with his Gestapo guard. "Good morning, pastor," he said. "I am just dropping in to ask you something. My comrades and I myself want to celebrate Holy Supper with you tonight after your sermon. You may be astonished, but we could not help asking you." In this way it happened that in the evening I preached my sermon: "Glory be to God in heaven and peace on ear th to men of good will!" And peace there was when we knelt down, seven people of different nations, divided by hatred and war, but now united and bound together by the love of God and by the grace of Jesus Christ. The small cell widened, walls and wires disappeared. We felt liberated and, in a flash, we saw God's promise fulfilled: "Peace on ear th." Join me in praying, witnessing, and serving to the end that in 1986 estranged people in our sick world may be healingly "united and bound together by the love of God and the grace of Jesus Christ." -VCG, 1985 DECEMBER 9