When I was working as a missions mobilizer, I came across this story entitled “Sing a little louder” as told by an old weeping Christian man.
A railroad track ran behind our small church, and each Sunday morning we would hear the whistle from the distance and then the clacking of the wheels moving over the track. We became disturbed when one Sunday we noticed cries coming from the train as it passed by. We grimly realized that the train was carrying Jews. They were like cattle in those cars!
Week after week that train whistle would blow. We would dread to hear the sound of those old wheels because we knew that the Jews would begin to cry to us as they passed our church. It was so terribly disturbing! We could do nothing to help these poor miserable people, yet their screams tormented us. We knew exactly at what time that whistle would blow, and we decided the only way to keep from being so disturbed by the cries was to start singing our hymns. By the time the train came rumbling past the church yard, we were singing at the top of our voices. If some of the screams reached our ears, we'd just sing a little louder until we could hear them no more. Years passed and no one talks about it much anymore, but I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. I can still hear them crying out for help. God forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians, yet did nothing to intervene.
I have been haunted by that story.
I wondered how you could live with that kind of memory but what could they have done?
I also wondered how the German people had allowed such a person to gain so much power. I could not imagine how that could happen.
But now…
Here we are dealing with things I never could have imagined.
At first the money to feed starving people through USAID was shut down. A friend of ours who has been directing a refugee camp in Haiti reached out to her church friends back here in Michigan and described that millions of people would die without that food. Most of the comments were tender - except one stating that we shouldn’t give money because it just complicates the poverty situation. I was stunned. Well, yes, poverty is obviously a complicated thing - but these people had not caused it. AND they were starving. In. That. Moment.
It wasn’t long until the ghoulish spectre of mobs of masked men began terrorizing our cities, dragging women from their cars, invading apartment buildings, breaking down doors, forcing people from their homes… and a whole lot more…
Some of our friends and neighbors deal with extreme fear - as do the International students we work with - here legally but targeted because of their skin color or their accent.
It makes me shudder.
It is indeed haunting.
Frightening.
What are we do to?
This girl went to Sunday School and church for 60 years and learned that we must submit to the authority placed over us.
But this girl was also taught to obey God rather than man.
Jesus spoke regularly about welcoming the stranger and helping the poor.
So what am I to do?
What CAN I do?
I wonder.
I cannot stand by and do nothing.
I can speak in protest, but my voice feels so small.
Maybe I can stand beside people who are afraid.
I can listen.
But is it enough?
I wonder.
