He Knows How We Feel

When my son Ryan was just a little guy, he had a favorite blanket that was worn to shreds. My wife, Marilyn, washed it with care because it was so frayed on the edges. We tried to give him a new one, but he loved the old one.

On a trip from our home in Argentina to Brazil, we spent the night in a hotel. The next morning we had breakfast and continued our journey. We drove for several hours and then discovered the special blanket was missing. In an effort to console our distraught, little son, I promised to stop at the hotel on the way back and ask about the blanket. That promise really seemed to calm him down. In reality, I didn’t think there would be much hope of finding the beloved blanket. If anyone saw it, they wouldn’t think twice about tossing the worn-out thing in the trash. On our return to Argentina, Ryan asked often about his blanket. When we finally arrived at the hotel, I inquired if anyone had found a little boy’s blanket. The manager said, “Just a minute,” and returned with a blanket. He informed me that a maid had brought it to him and told him this has great value to someone—so he put it in the safe and waited to see if the owner would return.

I have never forgotten how excited and comforted our little boy was to recover his blanket. Though he was still little, he was experiencing anxiety; however, it helped him to know that we all understood and were concerned about what he was feeling.

There isn’t a person on this planet that doesn’t need that same experience of knowing someone cares. We all want someone to validate our feelings with words like “I know what you are going through” or “I feel for you right now.” It does something for us. Every child needs for her parents to validate her feelings. Every husband or wife needs their spouse to validate their emotions.

There is no one who can do that like Jesus can. He came to this earth and took on a human body so he could validate our human experience. The writer of the book of Hebrews paints a beautiful picture of Jesus as our intercessor going to God on our behalf. He understands and is capable of comprehending our needs because he has experienced them.

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need (Hebrews 4:14-17).

We never met the kind maid in the city of Posadas, Argentina who safeguarded Ryan’s blanket because she recognized it was valuable, but I am grateful for people like that. Maybe there haven’t been too many people in your life like this lady, and you feel no one understands your hurt. Let me remind you there is one who does, and his name is Jesus.

Knowing the Evil from the Start

It has been 40 years since the Supreme Court of the United States passed Roe vs. Wade, making abortion on demand the law of the land. Since that infamous day, over 50 million babies have seen their demise at the hand of a cruel abortionist. There are days like this one that I ask myself how did this ever happen? How is it possible, in this land that was founded on principles of liberty and freedom, that the unborn have lost all their rights? The most dangerous place in America today is the womb.

As the Nazis were moving into the Netherlands during the Second World War, a Dutch theologian named Henry Kramer met with a group of Christians. It was a most troubling, dreadful time. These Dutch Christians knew that their Jewish neighbors were disappearing from their homes and businesses. They were there one day, and not the next. “What can we do?” they asked Kramer. Kramer answered, “I cannot tell you what to do,” he said, “but I can tell you who you are. And I know that when you know who you are, you will know what to do.”^[i]

Only when we know who we are, can we speak and act according to our beliefs. Only then will we live in congruence with what we value. According to all the surveys, a majority of Americans consider abortion to be wrong. If that is true, then why is Roe vs. Wade still the law, and why does abortion claim over 4000 babies every day? It is because there is incongruence between what people believe is right and their corresponding actions. This became very evident in post-World War II Germany. After the war, there was remorse in Germany. Bitter expressions of regret came from so many Christians as afterwards, they realized their failure only too late. It was a failure to try to stop what they knew was wrong.

One such man was a university professor and a diplomat named Albrecht Haushoffer. He was a quiet, gentle man who wrote poetry in his spare time. As he gradually came to recognize the enormity of the evil of Nazism, he was drawn into the resistance and arrested in 1944 after the failure of the Stauffenburg plot to assassinate Hitler. In the final days of the war, as the Russian tanks moved through the outskirts of the city of Berlin, the dictator hid in his Fuhrer bunker like a rat trapped in his hole.

The SS Guards at the Mobed city prison were given a list of those who were not allowed to survive the downfall of Nazism because they knew too much. Albrecht Haushoffer’s name was included on the list. A group of seven or eight prisoners were taken out of their cells that morning. They were told they were about to be released. Each of the prisoners was assigned an SS Guard and led out to the Tiergarten Park in the city of Berlin. As they came to the middle of that park, out of sight from anyone else, each guard stepped up to his assigned prisoner and shot them in the back of the head. The bodies were abandoned there in the snow and the mud of the ruined city.

Later, Albrecht’s brother heard rumors of what had happened, and he hurried into the park to search for his brother’s body. When he found it, there, clutched in his hand, was a blood-stained sheet of paper. Written on that piece of paper was a poem that Haushoffer had composed just a few hours before his execution.

It was entitled in German, “Schuldig Bin Ich,” “I am Guilty.”  “The burden of my guilt”, the condemned man wrote, “before the law weighs light upon my shoulders, to plot and conspire was my duty to the people. I would have been a criminal had I not. I am guilty, although not in the way you think. I should have done my duty sooner, I was wrong I should have called the evil sooner by its name. I hesitated to condemn for far too long. I now accuse myself within my own heart. I have betrayed my conscience for far too long. I have deceived myself and my fellow man. I knew the course of evil from its start. My warning was not loud enough or clear enough. Today as I die I know what I am guilty of.”[ii] We, too, have known the evil from the start.

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[i] Dynamic Preaching, April-May-2001

[ii] Dr. Laurence White, The Sin of Silence, An address delivered September 6, 2000, at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, MO