Monday a.m. - so very tired. . . wow what a day yesterday! The KidsWorld Big Red Bus appearance, having an amazing lunch with a couple I'm doing pre-marital counseling with . . . dinner with family to celebrate one of our boy's girlfriend's birthday . . . a crisis of two friends who fell off the wagon (hard) . . . it was worth it all!
I'm back, reading more carefully Philip Yancey's book on prayer. I really relate to most of Yancey's books - this one is so honest, so good!
In his book, Prayer, Yancey mentioned Etty Hillesum, the young Jewish girl who referred to prayer as an "uninterrupted dialog". Before the age of 19, she had finished a degree in law and also done advanced studies in psychology. Nine months after the Germans invaded the Netherlands (1942), she volunteered to serve on the Dutch Jewish counsel. She was allowed to travel
back and forth from Amsterdam and one of the concentration camps. Etty's personal diary was published, in English, in 1983 (I plan to buy the 2002 edition). Her view of prayer is both disturbing and, for me, awe-inspiring. I suspect the questions of "Why?" and "How?" were somehow pushed to the back burner so the presence of "Who?" could keep her free no matter what her physical circumstances. She eventually was sent to Auschwitz with her two parents and two brothers where they all were murdered. She is one remarkable woman! Here are a few of her thoughts about prayer and her life:"Sometimes I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised towards Your Heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude."
"Even if there is only one decent German, they would deserve to be protected from the barbarian rabble and for that one German's sake one should not pour out one's hatred for the entire people."
Speaking of the tragic evil of war, she wrote: "And I want to be there right in the thick of what people call horror and still be able to say: life is beautiful. Yes, I lie here in a corner, parched and dizzy and feverish and unable to do a thing. Yet I am also with the jasmine and the piece of sky beyond my window."
"Never give up, never escape, take everything in, and perhaps suffer, that's not too awful either, but never, never give up."
"For once you have begun to walk with God, you need only keep on walking with God and all of life becomes one long stroll -a marvelous feeling."
Etty's diary isn't all nice and pretty; it shows a person who was very self-absorbed, drawn to a forbidden love with an agnostic intellectual. But the growth in her life is marked by her use of the gift of prayer; it transformed her and left a legacy that is touching and changing lives even now - mine! It reminds me of Paul's words in the Bible, "In Him we live and move and have our being." I am discovering my real self, in Jesus, through prayer. A great gift I'm so excited about, is that of simply letting God break down the walls society and my own little pink brain has constructed: and allowing prayer to become an "uninterrupted dialog" of friendship, love, and wondrous awe!
Etty's last entry in her journal simply reads, "We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds."
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