To Glory

The last few months I’ve been going back to the testimonies of Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand again and again. Messianic Jews who walked away from party lives when they met Jesus, they were placed on earth in a season and location where they literally stepped in to living hell and parked there for two decades.

We talk about walking through a valley. Solitary confinement with constant torture is no walk. You can’t move. You don’t know what time of day it is, or if it is day. You are lied to. Left beaten, shocked, disoriented. That’s what they did to Richard when he refused to praise the communist party with its leftist agenda. He spoke the truth and suffered such brutal pain that he bore incredible scars the rest of his life. Sabina was thrown in a labor camp with thousands of other women. Lesbian guards were put in charge of them and they were treated worse than animals. From dawn to dark they had to work in freezing condition carrying heavy rocks by hand to build a dam. Kept on a starvation diet, whipped, and forced to walk through deep mud with no changes of wardrobe, many died. Sabina and Richard had to trust their son to the church to care for. Guards lied to both of them, leaving them to believe the other had died.

Richard described some of his darkest moments, pacing in a dark cell and choosing to praise God. He felt the Holy Spirit flood the space and the love of Christ so fill him that he could lift his weary arms and nearly dance with God.

Charles Spurgeon says, “Blessed is that man who in the most terrible storm is driven - not from his God, but even rides upon the crest of the lofty billows nearer towards heaven. Such happiness is the Christian’s lot. I do not say that every Christian possesses it, but I am sure that every Christian ought to. There is a highway to heaven, and all in it are safe; but in the middle of that road there is a special way, an inner path, and all who walk there are happy as well as safe.”

In our Cross Cultural Connections family, we are honored to serve teams who walk that kind of happy. Pastor N, whose son tried to murder him for following Jesus, Mama G, who was raped and left for dead, but rose up and adopted 57 orphans, Brother A who was martyred by the T’ban, Ma C who collects babies from the trash, Rev B who daily feeds thousands who come starving and beaten, fleeing before macabre terrorists who behead and rape, Bro D who lives where bombs fall and serves widows and orphans.

These people are not special, don’t want a pedestal, and are far too busy to even think about anything but what they are doing. But we who have it easy, who have vehicles and homes, utilities and food in the cupboard, even the luxury of money in the bank and concepts of holidays … we who have these earthly blessings can ponder the comparison - which implies that - being our brethren - we have a certain debt to them, to enable them to walk on in such hardships.

But also, we would do well to seek to sit at their feet and learn. These disciples have taken up their crosses and followed Christ. They are paying or have paid the price. And when you get to know them, you will see that their laugh lines, their smiles, their Joy in the Lord is their strength. This is the secret we would do well to glean from them. It’s that river of God, whose streams make glad … available, even to us.