“And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope.” Romans 5: 3-4
Pastor Richard Wurmbrand was a Lutheran pastor from Romania. Prior to that, however, he was raised as a staunch atheist, orphaned at an early age. As an adolescent, he was noticed early on for his academic prowess by the local Communist officials, and sent to study Marxism in Moscow, to eventually become a paid Comintern agent back in his home country of Romania. After his marriage in 1936, he met an elderly Christian couple in a small village in Transylvania, through whom he became a Christian, and subsequently became a Lutheran minister in the aftermath of WWII.
In Eastern Europe, Soviet officials officially declared Christianity “incompatible” with Communism. After publicly protesting government control of churches, he was arrested on his way to service on Feb. 29, 1948. He would spend the next 13 years in prison, constantly starved and brutally tortured in an effort to force him to renounce Christ.
A number of those years were spent in isolation in a small, cold concrete cell with no window. On the wall of his cell, a previous Christian prisoner had inscribed three words in Latin: “Dum Spiro, Spero”; “As long as I breathe, I hope/believe.” Through years of sunless days in that cell, interrupted only by torture sessions and the constant recorded voice through a caged speaker repeating “There is no God”, Pastor Wurmbrand did the only thing he could...to pray, and to lay his heart out in faith to God amidst his suffering. All of this to Christ Jesus, to have faith and hope in a place where there was neither faith nor hope.
In retrospect, he recalls that he had forgotten what color was, seeing only grey, cold stone for years. One day he was permitted to walk outside under guard within the prison walls for a short time. It was a cold, overcast day, but it was the first fresh air he had breathed for years. Even then, everything was grey...until he noticed something. It was a small blade of grass growing up through the concrete. No one else would have noticed , but to him, it was everything. Here was life. In spite of all of the crushing stone, God-given life had found its way to break through all of that dark, cold heaviness to somehow emerge...green, delicate, and alive. Much as Elijah heard God as a “small, still voice,” God was there all the time, and He had much greater plans for this faithful servant.
In times as such we are living now, there is not only hope, but there is true hope, true life and true purpose for your life in Christ Jesus, Who gave His life for you to give you new life...life eternal.
“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance, and my God.” Psalm 42:11
Reader Comments(0)