A Surviving Forgiveness

Eva Mozes Kor not only survived Auschwitz and made it to the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp, she has adopted the grandson of the former commandant as her own.  Her story is one of an amazing survival and incredible forgiveness.

Eva and her twin sister Miriam arrived at Auschwitz when they were 10 years old and were selected along with 1,500 other sets of twins for cruel experimentation and torture by the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele.  She once heard him laughingly say about her, "So young and she only has two weeks to live."  But she did live and she and her sister were in the 200 surviving sets of twins liberated by the Red Army.

On the 50th Anniversary of her liberation Mrs. Kor wrote a letter of forgiveness to her Nazi captors stating, "I had the power to forgive.  No one could give me the power or take it away from me.  I refused to be a victim and now I am free."

Mrs. Kor was latter contacted by Rainer Hoess, the grandson of Rudolf Hoess, the man who had been in charge of Auschwitz.  He had read the story of his grandfather and felt a great deal of shame about his family's legacy.  Eva and Rainer later arranged a meeting where they talked, embraced and began a relationship in which Rainer asked her to become his "grandmother."  She jokingly said that her own children "did not produce any grandchildren, so they forced me to adopt the grandson of a Nazi."

Her ability to survive and to forgive, then to go on to a life of true freedom amazes me.  I once visited a survivor of a Nazi death camp while working as a hospital chaplain at Baylor Hospital in Dallas.  She said she could never be free from what was done to her.  Every time she saw a homeless person it brought it all back to her. 

Contrast her story to Mrs. Kor's.  No matter what has been done to us, we still have choices about how we will respond.  Those choices lead to being free or remaining a victim.  There is a power in forgiveness.   Do you need to be set free?  That power is what we will look at this Sunday.

for the journey...

Tim

A Forgiving Forgiveness

Last weekend I attended the Grace Journey Men's Retreat.  I appreciate prayers and support that many of you gave me about this.  It was a great experience where I got to connect with God and with a great group of men.

There were about fifty first time attenders and fifty team members who made the retreat a wonderful time for us attenders.  Nine or ten attenders or "retreatants" came to a clear understanding of a relationship with Christ and accepted Him as their savior.  A lot of other spiritual and personal changes could be seen.

I got to see God do some really neat things between people.  I got to see a very diverse group of men - ethnically, generationally, religiously - find what we have in common in Christ.  One retreatant who had recently gotten out of prison recognized another retreatant had been one of his guards while on the inside.  The two connected as brothers now on the outside; there was no animosity, just a new sense of unity.

Two of the team members had made the realization that while one of them was a police officer years ago he arrested the other.  The man who had been arrested lost his job and a lot of other things after the arrested but that spiral down led him to turn to Christ.  Now they served side by side to share what Christ can do in forgiving us and enabling us to forgive.

God does give us a forgiving forgiveness.  My receiving it - if I really understand the magnitude of it - enables me to give it.  When I can't fully give it, it means there is something more of it that I need to ask for and receive.

How about you?  Is there someone in your life that if you both showed up at the same weekend retreat you would say to yourself, "Oh no, not him/her?"  God wants to fix that right now, not someday.  He wants to give you a forgiving forgiveness.  We will talk about receiving and giving that this Sunday.

for the journey...

Tim