Just today, I came across a really touching story over at www.aholyexperience.com. Here's the first part (of part one): hope it touches you like it did me.
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How to Really Live (Part 1)
(By Ann Voskamp)
It’s like an awakening. That right in the middle of the Sunday sermon, while the pastor’s preaching what salvation really means, I can see a woman in a pew ahead of me flipping through the pages of an Avon catalogue.
I can only bow my head.
Because there are a thousand ways to be lukewarm and there’s a reason I know that. I’ve been apathetic about grace and casual about Christ and you can lose your First Love faster than you can lose the 100 meter dash. And when you lose your First Love, you don’t just lose your way — you lose your mind.
And that’s why on the way home from Sunday services, I tell the six kids what I remember of the story.
“I don’t know if I ever told you, how at the very end of July 1941, WWII, a man escaped from Auchwitz. And the Nazis’ protocol to discourage attempts at escape was simple: One man escapes — ten men were executed in his place. So after the escape of this one man, all the men, looking like bags of bones, are called out of the barracks.”
“What are barracks?” Shalom leans forward. I explain. We pass a field lined with round bales.
“So in front of the barracks, one man is standing: Franciszek Gajowniczek.” I always struggle with the pronunciation of his Polish name. “And Gajownicszek, he’s thinking: Out of hundreds, I just have to escape being one of the 10 names.
The Nazi commandant calls the first name, second, third, fourth. Franciszek Gajowniczek hopes hard that he would live to see 42… live to hold his children close again…seventh, eighth, ninth names…”
He’s only a few years older than I am. And he’s only one name away from seeing the sun rise tomorrow. We turn at Bobby Johnson’s corner.
I really love this bit:
ReplyDeleteThe rain’s falling harder now. That’s what Gajowniczek had said:
“Because of Maximilian Kolbe, I can’t act frivolously — because every single moment is pregnant with meaning. Because it was a gift to me from that one who died that I might breathe this breath, that I might act today, that I might embrace this moment — I could never take another moment for granted.”
That lump in my throat. Forget the glossy catalogues and the mindless distractions and the frivolous frittering away! Because One died for me that I might breathe this breath…
It’s all a gift.
And I turn and touch a child’s cheek and when you are saved, it can startle you alive.
Hmm makes someone want to do something useful
Oh, yes. I loved that bit! VERY thought-provoking.
ReplyDelete~Esther
Abigail: that is a very thought provoking story. Really touched me.
ReplyDelete