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The Reichstag in Berlin
After leaving my London buddies, I wandered around Berlin a bit, then decided I had better go get my bearings. I went back to my hostel and grabbed my backpack from the luggage room to move it upstairs to my room. I opened the door to my room and shut it again quickly without going in. I was confused. Why was there a guy standing in the middle of my room? There was also a girl, so I thought maybe they were a couple and that he was just visiting her. I stood in the hall puzzling over this new development and finally went into the room and claimed a bed.
The girl greeted me warmly, while the boy went into the bathroom and shut the door. “It’s a mixed dorm,” she said quietly with a little laugh. Apparently we had both booked ourselves into a mixed dorm without realizing it. Nadia and I began talking, and it turned out she was from Amsterdam.
We talked about our travels and about our plans for Berlin. She asked if I was going out that night. I said I wasn’t sure. I knew I would be ready for sleep after riding the night bus into Berlin. A little later, I went out alone and wandered around the city centre. I found a park and took some pictures. I went into the Rathaus (which in German means “council house,” like a city hall) and looked around. When I came back to the hostel, Nadia said she had found a fun, reggae music place to go the next night and asked if I would like to join her. I agreed.
My second day was full of sightseeing in Berlin. I awoke early to go see the Reichstag, but wasn’t early enough to beat the crowds.
The Reichstag building was opened in the late 1800s to house the German Empire’s first parliament. It is the building that Hitler used to take absolute control in 1933. When “Communists” burned it down in that year, he asked the Parliament for powers of war and then was virtually unstoppable. He used those powers of war to annihilate the Jewish race in many places and to persecute and murder many others he deemed unfit in his new world order.
I waited in line for three hours, but I still think the view was worth it. Something amazing happened while I was waiting in line. I have been reading through the beginning of the Bible, very slowly. I came into Exodus while I was standing on the steps of the Reichstag. Exodus is the story of God freeing his people, the Jewish people, from Egyptian bondage.
The story of Exodus is a true one. I have no doubts that the God who freed the Jewish people in Exodus is living and active today. I have no answers for why the Holocaust happened. I can only say that standing on the steps of that historic building, many things came home to me. I know there are stories of hope scattered throughout the Holocaust, but those do not recount for the mass tragedy of the lives that were taken.
What came home to me was the knowledge that I will never understand. I cannot give an adequate answer to the suffering in the world. I cannot say why some are rich and some poor, why some survived and others were murdered.
But I can trust in a God who is bigger and who sees the mass plan. When I was in Amsterdam, I visited the home of Holocaust survivor Corrie Ten Boom. She and her family sheltered people during the Holocaust and were caught and sent to an interment camp. They were devout Christians who shared the Hope of Christ while in the camp. Two weeks before they were released, her beloved sister died in the camp. After Corrie was released, she helped rehabilitate others who experienced trauma as a result of living in the camps. Then she toured the world calling herself a ‘tramp for Christ,’ sharing her story and the hope she had despite the horrors of her past. Wherever she went, she took a beautiful embroidered crown with her.
Let me pause to say I am oversimplifying Corrie’s story for the purpose of this blog, but highly recommend that you read her book, The Hiding Place. It is well worth your time.
Wherever Corrie went, she would take out this bit of embroidery and show the crowd, saying that we only see the backside of the embroidery, the threads as they are being knotted and tied and nothing makes sense. It is a jumbled heap. But God sees the front side. Oftentimes, the worst times in our lives are the jewels in the crown of our lives.
I respect Corrie Ten Boom for saying this and feel it might sound cliche coming from someone else, but she lived through hell. That moment at the Reichstag taught me something.
My God stands the test of time.
Standing on the steps of the Reichstag, I realized history will make itself everyday. We have a choice how we will react or if we will take a stand when troubles come into our lives.
Unfortunately, it isn’t in only the big things that we must take a stand—it is also in the everyday acts of taking out the trash for our moms and feeding our sick neighbors that create in us the character to change the world when our time comes.
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