Stay Out Of It

I have been in Israel for the past week and today I visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem.  It was my third time to go and the impact is the same every single time. There are no words for the emptiness and sorrow that it produces in you. I go back because I never want to forget. I go back because the people are worth remembering.  I go back because it reminds me that the devil takes certain things serious that many of us tend to easily dismiss.  Though many dismiss Israel and the Jewish people as unimportant or even wicked, the enemy of God, Satan himself, knows how valuable and important they are. So much so, that he has tried to rid the earth of them from time immemorial.  Elie Wiesel, the famous thinker and Holocaust survivor is quoted as saying, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death. What say you?” (Click Here To Read My Post ‘What’s the Big Deal About Israel?’)

There are many times in life where see the value of simply ‘staying out of it.’  Your siblings or your parents are arguing… stay out of it!  Your wife asks you if what she’s wearing makes her look fat… stay out of it!  But too often I find that our culture has tried to convince us that we should simply stay out of everything but our own selfish pursuits and pleasures. There is simply no moral or Godly justification for that sort of thinking. I truly am ‘my brother’s keeper.’  And while I certainly don’t have all the answers nor do I believe I can fix everything single-handedly, I know that it is my job before God to do what I can do, when I can do it. (Click Here To Read My Post ‘The Wound Is Where The Light Gets In’)

The walkway leading to the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem is lined with a grove of trees.  That grove is called ‘The Garden of the Righteous Among The Nations.’  Each tree has a name plate on it which represents a non-Jewish person that risked or gave their lives to save Jewish people during the Holocaust. Among them are names you may recognize like Corrie Ten Boom and Oscar Schindler. There are about 21,000 other names you may not know. These people knew that they had to do something. But beyond knowing that they should or feeling like the ought to, they DID do something.They did what they COULD do. To this day they are memorialized for simply choosing to not sit idly by and do nothing. One such person is Irena Sendler.

Irena Sendler was a Christian and a Polish nurse who served in the Warsaw Ghetto caring for the Jews there during World War II. She daily saw the atrocities of the Holocaust all around her.  She offered medical care to help the starving people of the ghetto but she determined that she could do more. One by one she began to smuggle Jewish children away to safety, rescuing them from the ghetto and placing them in safe houses or among families willing to care for them. Often, this was the difference between a family’s lineage dying entirely in Hitler’s gas chambers or their name carrying on. Sendler would smuggle babies in her medical bag and carry them across the Nazi checkpoints, risking her own life nearly every day.  By the time she was found out and captured she had rescued some 2500 children from the Nazi death machine. (Read more on her here)

For some of us, we have so diminished our value or predetermined that we have so little to offer that we resign ourselves to inaction. Life will try and make you small. The enemy of your soul works night and day to beat you down because he fears the day you actually wake up and boldly offer what you have to offer. No one is saying you’re going to change the whole world.  But no one is asking you to do that. We can often feel that if our impact isn’t significant then it is insignificant. Though that concept may work grammatically, when it comes to action, your effort and offering could be the difference between life and death for one.  And to that ONE, your effort is beyond significant. It is heroic and life-changing. (Click Here to Read My Post ‘Same Storm Different View’)

Take action. Do something. Make the phone call. Send the text message. Speak up. Be bold.  Not to be proved right or to make a point. Take action to communicate God’s love and value of every human being who bears His image. See people as the most valuable thing on the planet and when you do you will be loving your neighbor as yourself. That’s impossible to do without God’s love deep in your heart.  When you accept God’s love through His Son, Jesus, then you are empowered to love your neighbor as yourself in a greater measure. This is how we fulfill the greatest commandment to love God and our neighbor. And it is how we overcome the emptiness of this world. God is for you today and so am I.  (Click Here To Read My Post ‘It’s Worth The Weeds’)

From The Bible

If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them. – James 4:17 NIV

The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” – Mark 12:29-31 NIV

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go. – Joshua 1:9 NIV