Friday, December 2, 2022

Why Schindler Got It

Friday, December 2, 2022

Give your love of justice to the king, O God, and righteousness to the king’s son.  Help him judge your people in the right way; let the poor always be treated fairly.  May the mountains yield prosperity for all, and may the hills be fruitful.  Help him to defend the poor, to rescue the children of the needy, and to crush their oppressors.  May they fear you as long as the sun shines, as long as the moon remains in the sky.  Yes, forever!  Psalm 72:1-5

Adolph Hitler was a king (of sorts).  He did nothing as holy as rescuing children of the needy; rather, he had them killed in concentration camps, and shot in the streets by his ruthless SS officers.  Oskar Schindler was a German businessman, capitalizing on the Nazi need for military weapons and supplies.  He used cheap Jewish labor to make a fortune.  Then one day he saw the little Jewish girl in a red coat.  The next day he saw her corpse loaded on a truck with many other bodies.  Schindler’s whole life became a mission to protect people from Hitler’s obsession with exterminating Jews from the planet.  In the end Schindler saved nearly 1,000. 

There is nothing that evokes compassion that will move most humans like seeing what Schindler saw.  A greedy businessman does not mend his ways when confronted with difficult social conditions, caused by, or exploited by his business practices.  He is unmoved by ethics or morality.  But the stark reality of a human life, barely embarked on breathing, has the embryo of change for even the most hardened of souls.  Schindler got it (the compassion to do right) because life’s most poignant reality, our human connection with God, pierced his hard heart.

King David prayed the prayer recorded in Psalm 72 near the end of his life.  He had lived long enough, sinned big enough, and learned life’s lessons well enough, to understand the God-connection we all have.  As part of the created order, all human beings are “children” of the Almighty.  We’re related.  David’s prayer was that the wisdom, courage, and compassion he’d learned, would now be passed along – and take hold – in his son, Solomon.  It would be necessary to see the nation through lean times, and help the nation be humble before God in their high times. 

Adolph Hitler, baptized as a youth into the Lutheran Church, did his best to stamp out the image and lineage of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and David.  And it was done in the (supposed) holy name of preserving the purity of God’s created order.  It took a momentary confrontation of a child in a red coat with a Nazi-supporting, hardened businessman, to engage the holiness of God on a nightmare against humanity.  As King David had a prophet (Nathan[1]) who confronted him with his sin, and as Adam and Eve in the garden, Schindler heard the still small voice of God from out of the whirlwind of war’s madness saying …where are you…what are you doing?  He had to answer.

For You Today  

Oskar Schindler overlooked a lot to get to the top of the business world.  One day he could not get a little girl in a red coat out of his mind. 

What have you seen lately, or what will you see today, to remind you who, and whose you are?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

       Choosing   and   What to Do

Images:  Title Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=723965   Images without citation are either personal property of the author, or in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©  


[1] Read 2 Samuel 12 for the account of Nathan the prophet confronting King David with his sins.

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