A God Who Saves
“I don’t believe in that religion stuff!” my father-in-law
scoffed, dismissing all mention of God with a wave of his broad, work-toughened
hands.
Pop, at the age of eighty-eight, was a proud, self-reliant
German-born American. He insisted that he had seen too much suffering to ever
believe that there could be a living, loving God. Pop had barely survived the
aftermath of World War I as a child in his native Hamburg. In an attempt to escape from his
memories of disease and starvation, and certain that he would “strike it rich,”
Pop immigrated to the United States in October, 1929. Two weeks later, the
stock market crashed. Pop, along with the rest of the world, was confronted
with the Great Depression.
Despite many hardships in the decade that followed, Pop
poured all of his German stubbornness into becoming a model American citizen.
When World War II broke out, Pop gladly served as a first lieutenant in the
United States Army. The brutality of the war affected Pop so deeply that he rarely
shared his memories of the buddies he had lost or the atrocities he had
witnessed. Hardened and cynical, he scorned the very idea that there could be a
God. According to Pop, anyone who actually believed in God was a fool. After
the war, Pop devoted himself to the American dream and watched in disbelief as
his wife and children, one by one, turned to the God he denied.
“You’ll get over it,” Pop assured his youngest son, my
husband, one day as we departed for church. We didn’t get over it. We prayed
for Pop instead. For more than twenty years, we prayed. But the trials of old
age did nothing to soften Pop’s heart. His temper shortened all the more, and
we despaired during his last weeks of life, certain that nothing could ever
touch his heart. Many had tried. Our spirits sank all the more when Pop
suffered a stroke and began to relive his past aloud. He was oblivious to us
then, and we began to mourn. No one could possibly reach Pop now, we reasoned.
No one.
For twenty-four hours, Pop lived in his memories, flowing
backward through his life until he literally became as a child again. Then, he
began to sing in broken English and German, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for
the Bible tells me so ….”
We were incredulous, and skeptical. But over the course of
the next five days—the last of his life—Pop was transformed. Despite the
debilitating effects of his illness, he radiated a pure sweetness that we had
never seen before. And he actually said to us, “I love you.”
A miracle!
Most wonderful of all, he joyfully affirmed his love of God
over and over again.
Indeed, only One could reach him.
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