“And when we came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself, with the soldier who guarded him.”
Acts 28:16
I find this amazing: Paul, under 'house arrest,' wore chains while accepting visitors and still boldly proclaimed the Kingdom of God. I marvel at his humility in a completely unjust situation that lasted two full years!
When my husband and I purchased a starter townhouse, I grimly thought to myself that we are moving into a ghetto. (By the way, ghetto means something different in Poland than it does here in America.) Though our house has many blessings like a gated back yard and more living space than I’ve ever enjoyed before, it’s still not the dream home I imagined. And of course the burden of a mortgage can very much feel like imprisonment(!)
The architecture of the condominium is oddly Bavarian, with characteristic beams right at the entrance. The population is predominately Jewish, again reminding me of an ethnic neighborhood in Europe. I do love my neighbors! One of the families down the row, with window shutters painted blue, have five children. They often burst out of the house barefoot to ride on scooters like a flock of summer birds.
The memory of the World Wars does not belong to my generation, and yet the reminiscence of the horrors is still a raw and poignant wound. My former high school in Kazimierz, Poland was situated in the actual historic Jewish ghetto. A ghostly tenement building with boarded windows across the street, starred into our classrooms. Apparently no owner nor descendant has claimed it for nearly a century. Perhaps that’s because the ghetto was only a temporary transit into a situation that was unspeakably worse… the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. My grandfather’s cousin is one of the names of over 1.1 million men, women and children who lost their lives there.
How Blessed we are to not live in daily fear of bombing, war terrors, restricted water and food. How privileged to enjoy so many comforts of the 21st century! And yet the invisible viral enemy currently at war with our bodies, is a striking reminder that we still live in a fallen world.
Fallen but redeemed by Grace! Lacking but never short of God’s Plentiful Mercy!
God bless you,
Edyta
