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?
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.
