Fog

We will all face a time, maybe a number of times, when the answers we had grown used to will no longer be sufficient to bring the peace they once provided.  The world that we live in, and by this I mean that which is normal in our everyday lives, will be challenged by a new idea, or a new circumstance, that forces us to re-evaluate what once made everything make sense to us.  When these times come, we are brought to a place of decision:  "will I choose to maintain what was because it is familiar or will I be willing to forge a new direction that will open the door to life?" 

These are times when a great fog can set in.  Old and familiar landmarks cease to bring the sense of peace that we are used to.  What once was seems no longer able to satisfy a deep longing for protection.  Fog sets in and we become fearful of making any steps in any direction because there are no longer any "maps" available to guide.

In 1929 a young girl by the name of Anne Frank was born.  She was a Jew who would soon feel first-hand the brutality of having the world that once made sense to her snatched away in a heartbeat.  In an attempt to escape the oppression of the Nazi Germans, Anne and her family lived in a few small rooms joined to her father's business.  They never left these rooms for two years.  That is until they were discovered and brought to the concentration camps where they died before the Allies could liberate them. 

Anne was 15 when she finally stopped living in the fog.

Anne left us a searingly honest account of her experiences in her diary that she kept faithfully all through her time in hiding.  We are allowed to see her despair, but we are also invited into something much more beautiful, much deeper, more powerful, than anything despair could conjure. What we hear is the power of faith, hope and love, coming from such a powerless source--the irony is so compelling that it is impossible to deny the truth that there is something more--much more than the fog that wanted to envelop and paralyze.

Anne writes:  "It's utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death.  I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too.  I feel the suffering of millions.  And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more."

Anne Frank was a prophet in every sense of the term.  She was fully aware that her desperate circumstances were not the whole story.  She knew, with great clarity, that she was experiencing a dark gathering of doom that would claim many, but she knew also that there was hope.

We must not find our hope in anything other than Jesus Christ!  We cannot find it in our families, or our bank accounts.  We cannot put our hope in finely constructed theologies that so often do little more than separate "us" from "them".  There has been so much fragmentation that has been wrought throughout the ages between denominations, and this justified in our minds because we think the only way toward "truth" is to define it based on our best efforts and understandings, instead of based on a humble belief that Jesus is the way, and Jesus is enough. 

Much like Anne, we need to look up. 

Psalm 121:1-2 "I lift my eyes to the hills--where does my help come from?  My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth."

I don't know if Anne Frank knew Jesus personally, but I see His fingerprints all over her thoughts.  And I thank the Lord for people like her--people who were living in the fog, but found a ray of light shining in their lives because they had the courage to look up, and to their amazement the fog lifted.

Will you look up?

BT