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27 SINGING WITH THE ENEMY Romans 16:25-27 The development of the Seminary's new campus is progressing rapidly. Skeletal structures of the major buildings are arising. The complex of apar tments is taking shape. The Lord is generously providing for the millions of dollars needed to defray the cost of this project. In shor t, there's every indication that by next September this Seminary will be operating from a new location preparing students to be effective witnesses to the gospel of Jesus and His love. Pre-Christmas I have been reading Stanley Weintraub's Silent Night. It's his account of the spontaneous truce that prevailed in the ghastly trenches of World War I, for a few days in late December 1914 as Allied and German soldiers stopped their killing and began to fraternize. Let me share an excerpt from that account. The night was filled with sights and sounds too remarkable to credit one's senses, daylight came too soon. It took the suspension of disbelief to accept the reality that the hateful enemy hungered for Bruderschaft. For most British soldiers, the German insistence on celebrating Christmas was a shock after the propaganda about Teutonic bestiality, while the Germans had long dismissed the British as well as the French as soulless and materialistic and incapable of appreciating the festival in the proper spirit. . . . Five Germans who, after singing since daybreak, shouted for someone to arrange a "you no shoot, we no shoot day." . . . It was with shared traditions and song that the two sides approached one another. Yuletide carols initiated a tentative cour tship that fur ther developed through physical contact and ultimately sharing the soldiers' most valued commodities—food and tobacco and such souvenirs as uniform buttons and insignia. Profoundly moved, soldiers on both sides gathered to celebrate Christmas, while the Germans sang "Stille Nacht." As I read this true and moving account, I kept thinking and praying that by God's grace a far more extended peace might break out in our world. With God the seemingly impossible can become a reality. So let's give ourselves daily to believing intercession. -VCG, 2004 DECEMBER 20