SUNDAY, JANUARY 13, 2008

THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY

________________________________________________

Dear Friends in Our Lord Jesus:

It was during the deepest, darkest moments of the Cold War in the Soviet Union. A young woman was arrested by the secret police on the charge of being a Christian. She was seized in the middle of the night, thrown into a tiny cell, and tortured. Her name was Liuba Ganevskaya.

Day after day, Liuba was insulted, starved, and beaten. She was told her punishment would continue until she revealed the names of other Christians. She politely declined.

One evening several months after her arrest, she decided that she had suffered enough. As she wrote later, “Enough is enough. I will not receive the blows with meekness anymore. I will tell the guard to his face that he is a criminal.”

When the guard approached her, though, Liuba somehow saw him in a different light. For the first time, she noticed that he was as exhausted as she was. He was as deprived of sleep as she was. And he was at the point of emotional collapse, just as she was. The Lord spoke to her at that moment, telling her that she and the guard were caught in the same nightmare. Both were victims of an evil regime that lashed out at all -- even members of the secret police and their families. Suddenly, Liuba smiled.

“Why do you smile?” the guard asked.

She replied: “I don’t see you the way a mirror would show you right now. I see you as you surely once were, a beautiful, innocent child. We are the same age. We might have been playmates. I see you, too, as I hope you will be. There was once a persecutor worse than you named Saul of Tarsus. He became an apostle and a saint. What burden so weighs on you that it drives you to the madness of beating a person who has not harmed you?”

Stunned, the guard put down his whip and walked out of the room. He left that day a changed man. And Liuba Ganevskaya lived to witness and tell the story.

-- The Very Rev. Dr. Steve Sellers +