A Vision of What Could Be

It was November 9, 1989, Gunter Schabowski, a member of the ruling Politburo of the German Democratic Republic, stood before the cameras, the eyes of the World were on him. A look of cold death upon his face, as he spoke with apparent anguish, “All boarders to the West are open.” The Wall had come down! The Wall that had separated families and friends had come down. The Wall that had separated Socialist and Capitalist cultures had come down. The World would never be the same.

Hildegard, a forty-year-old mother, housewife, amateur singer, school teacher, and East German citizen, wrote of that night. “I was performing with my cabaret group in Cottbus, about three hours drive from Berlin when someone said they had heard on the radio that the Wall had been opened. We all dismissed it as another rumor.

Following the performance, we were driving back and heard it for ourselves. When we arrived in Berlin, we immediately drove across the border into West Berlin. It was all a chaotic blur. The city center, on Ku’damm, was one big party. After an hour, we came back, and my friends dropped me off at my home. I tried to go to sleep but couldn’t, it had been almost thirty years. My life had been one of strict order. Joy and freedom of expression had been a rarity.

Unable to sleep, I returned to West Berlin to be hugged by my mother, whom I had not seen in over twenty-eight years. She had been waiting and praying for this moment every day for twenty-eight years. I didn’t understand the term prayer, but I did recognize a mother’s love.”

In a world of chaos and disharmony, where hate is commonplace and even sanctioned by so many, we are called by God to be a microcosm of God’s Kingdom of unity, love, and peace. The Church, His body, is to be to the World a blanket of security! But, this unity, peace, and love is the manifestation of God’s presence. It is brought about by the Spirit of God among His people.

If you want to know more, and I hope you do, then read Ephesians 2; 11-22. And, just imagine what could be if we would be the Church .. Just imagine!