Soul and Spirit | Ain't Complicated

Lest We Forget

January 27 is the day established by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Amazingly, today is only the fifth observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day! What was the UN’s hurry?!

Anyway, here are excerpts from two stories I read/scanned a few minutes ago:

Survivors and world leaders gathered in the bitter chill at Auschwitz on Wednesday to remember the hundreds of thousands who perished in one of Nazi Germany’s infamous concentration camps, 65 years to the day since troops of the Red Army liberated the camp.

[…]

Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau of Tel Aviv, a holocaust survivor, recited the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning, and sirens wailed across the barracks and barbed wire where an estimated 1.1 million people died.

Source: Holocaust Memorial Day marked on Auschwitz liberation anniversary

Here’s one other article excerpt:

During the Holocaust, 6 million Jews and millions of others were systematically murdered in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Yet many lived to tell their stories.

Arthur Berger, spokesman for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, said the first-hand accounts are important, especially in the Internet age when misinformation is easily spread. Those memories must be documented as much as possible, Berger said, in the hope that, by preserving the truth about what happened, future atrocities can be prevented.

Source: Victims, survivors honored International Holocaust Remembrance Day

According to Wikipedia, on this day in 1945, “The Red Army liberates the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.”

In case you forgot, I titled this post “Lest We Forget.” So I ask, Have the world’s powers that be forgotten Nazi Germany as Iran’s leaders make their anti-Israel, anti-Jew comments and threats? We shall see.

Scott Brown and Abortion

I came across this on the 23rd:

Many “pro-life” leaders are applauding the victory of Scott Brown Republican to the United States Senate in a special election held this past week in Massachusetts. In all honesty, his victory is at best, a hollow one for the preborn. Let’s take an objective, non-partisan look at Scott Brown’s record and rhetoric on prenatal child-killing as recorded at the website “OnTheIssues.org”:

Source: Scott Brown’s Election to US Senate: A Hollow Victory for the Preborn

Ahhh, politics!

Or do I mean, Uggghh, politics!

🙁

(If you’re one of those thrilled and relieved at his election in Massachusetts, do you know Senator-elect Brown’s stance on abortion?)

PS: This post isn’t a political statement. It’s a nudge at my fellow conservative Mennonites who are all thrilled at Mr. Brown’s election.)

From Haitians, With Love

The Dalles couple describes how they survived Haiti quake

They wandered the ruined city for 10 hours before ending up at the U.S. embassy where their wounds were dressed. Joel received about 20 stitches to his head.

The couple were changing clothes when the earth started shaking so they were only wearing underwear.

Joel and Rachel wandered through a horrifying scene. They say the bloody streets were dark with people dying all around them. In the midst of it all, they said the battered Haitian people offered them food, water and even the clothes off their backs.

“Haitians just kept running up to us saying here have my shirt, have my sweatshirt, you’re cold,” said Colbourne.

They said the love they felt from the battered Haitian people was humbling.

HT: EGerig (who just a few minutes ago also pointed me to the Livesay Haiti blog)

No Thumbs

Imagine this!

You’re not going to believe this one: We were out to dinner seated at a table adjacent to a family of five and not a one of them was working a Blackberry, e-mailing or texting. And they didn’t have ear buds jammed in their ears.

It was such a flashback of days gone by, we expected to see Norman Rockwell in the corner with an easel and canvas painting the scene for a cover of The Saturday Evening Post.

And now comes something even more unbelievable — they sat there like that for an hour and a half. That’s right, 90 minutes. Who knew families could still sit together that long and not be parked in front of a television?

But wait — there’s more.

(Might be good for you to read the rest of the article.)

Guard your family time from technology!

Christian Aid Ministries in Haiti

From CNN:

Christian Aid Ministries, an Amish-Mennonite organization, has had staff and a distribution network in Haiti for over 20 years. To help earthquake survivors, they are providing search and rescue operations, emergency supplies such as medicines and food, and later on rebuilding of houses.

From CAM themselves:

CAM-Haiti staff members spent much of the night helping dig people out of concrete rubble. They were traumatized by what they saw and heard — dead bodies strewn around, sounds of tapping from those still alive but trapped deep under the debris, dead and injured pushed in wheelbarrows, and much more. It is so scary digging people out; one wrong move could kill them, says Darvin Seibel, CAM’s staff member in Haiti. One lady’s head was pinched so tight, any shifting would instantly kill her!

[…]

Our Titanyen facility has been turned into a relief center and mini-hospital to feed and care for homeless mothers with young children. A USA CAM rescue team, including some EMTs, flew to Haiti to help look for survivors and do cleanup. Our staff in Haiti, including the La Source medical clinic team, is doing everything they can to provide emergency aid. Later there will be a lot of rebuilding to do as well.

As I recall, over 98% of donations to Christian Aid Ministries goes directly into their programs. That’s really good!! So please visit the Haiti page I set up for them and donate to their relief efforts.

What Do You See?

I’m prone to see the ominous dark clouds of the gathering storm. Storms, really — religious, societal, political, military, cultural, financial, spiritual.

I also notice the diminishing space as the dark tunnel’s walls close in at an alarming, hope-crushing rate.

Then yesterday morning I saw the January 6 entry on our day-by-day For the Love of a Friend flip calendar:

A great deal of what we see
still depends on what we’re looking for.

Oh my! 😳

I went back again and again to have another read.

And below the above quote, this from Psalm 39:7….

But now, Lord, what do I look for?
My hope is in you.

How easily I forget! 😥

Last night I read this comment by Crusoe:

I think you can see much farther
through a tear
than you can through a telescope.

(No, not that Crusoe; rather, the one in Flight of the Eagles, the first book of the Seven Sleeper Series by Gilbert L. Morris.)

Oh, and another clarifier: tear above is the kind that comes out of our eyes.

So…I am thankful for all these reminders. And for the hope I have in Jesus Christ.

Unsung Heroine

I don’t know the words to this song; I’ll just make them up as I go along. The tune will be up to someone else.

Yesterday was our niece’s bridal shower.

Though Ruby had no formal tasks or responsibilities for the planning and execution thereof, she was very involved in the preparations.

(I’m glad we didn’t have to experience all the blown gaskets and stripped gears had she not been.)

Decorating the night before. There she was.

Doing the cinnamon rolls. There she was.

Rounding up stuff before the launch. There she was.

Cleaning up afterward. There she was.

This, that, the other, something else — she helped.

Tired? Sure.

Meals to fix otherwise? Sure.

A household to keep running? Sure.

A second Christmas family meal and afternoon to host two days before? Sure.

She gives and gives and gives. Because she’s Mom.

Not for the gratefulness. Not for the acclaim. Not for the power. Not for the reciprocating good deed. But because she’s Mom.

Because Moms put their families first. (Or should.)

No wonder she was glad to have so major a project accomplished and finished.

Three cheers aren’t enough, nor three cheerers.

Nevertheless, listen to this single cheer from this single cheerer: WooHoo!!!

“Let her own works praise her in the gates.”

That’s how the Biblical book of Proverbs ends, speaking of the virtuous woman. Look it up for yourself in your own Bible. It’s right there in Proverbs 31:31.