Everywhere, God ….
Wednesday, September 27, 2023
Obstacles or Beauty,
Always, All Things Are
In God’s Hands.
Psalm 95:4
In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.
Revelation 14:7
He said in a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.’
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Words of Grace For Today
Das DDR Museum feiert am 18. Juli ein besonderes Jubiläum: Vor 30 Jahren wurde am 1. Juni 1979 um 20:00 Uhr in der Samariterkirche in Berlin-Friedrichshain die erste von vielen Blues-Messen gefeiert.
On July 1, 1979 at 20:00 the Samariterkirche in Berlin- Friedrichshain celebrated the first of many Blues-Worship-Services. These services were packed in every available space with youth in East Germany (most not belonging to any church), struggling to find their way in the most surveilled country ever, with demands for adherence to policies and attitudes that everyone knew were impossibly false.
A young man, who was impressed with the diaconate work for the handicapped that the church did, spoke to the youth pastor at the Samariterkirche and offered to do something for the church. What can you do? I can make blues. So a blues worship service started up, led by the youth pastors. The idea spread to churches across East Berlin. Young people flocked to the churches.
The STASI (state security police) attended as well, with all the misery that could mean for pastors, youth and any supporters.
The church hierarchy questioned why all this for people who did not belong to the church.
The youth pastors replied that if they came, it was their job to provide worship for them. And they did addressing the questions of youth that were not allowed to be addressed anywhere else in society, not in school, not on the streets: What of this state controlled life being watched and reported on, and all of it recorded by the STASI, determining often what education and work one could get if one was not thrown in prison? What of forced military service for all youth, of no freedom to ask how life could be better, when all of life from indoctrination in school to lifelong the ‘party line’ had to be spoken even though it was obviously false? And what of the wall and border areas and policies that prohibited people from leaving to the West.
The gloriously coloured West with promise, like a first love, that in fact wears off quickly to reveal a reality that is so corrupt and rotten with excesses and poverty for most, with privilege for the few.
Even to all this – East Germans hardships, the West’s corruptions and poverty – even all this is in God’s hands.
And those blues services provided one piece (allowed by Honecker in conversation with Bishop Schönherr, both survivors of Nazi concentration camps) of a perfect storm that led to the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, and the signing of the Unification Treaty 3 October 1990.
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Sometimes what we see as great obstacles, mountains blocking our way forward in life, are God’s declarations of magnificent beauty, calling us forward to something new.