Thursday

I'm Only One Person. What Can I Do?

Sometimes the world’s problems seem very big, and I feel very small. 

I hear of gruesome beheadings of Christians. I see children die in gang-related crossfire. I hear of babies who perish at the hands of abortionists. I see a generation of young people turning its back on biblical truth and moral conservancy.

And I think, I'm only one person. What can I do? 

In October of 1943, Adolf Hitler ordered the arrest and deportation of some 7,800 Jewish citizens from the country of Denmark. The courageous Danish resistance movement, along with a great number of ordinary citizens, undertook an unprecedented rescue attempt.

In an era long before cell phones, text messages, and emails, the Danes warned their Jewish countrymen of the impending roundup. Some even resorted to paging through local phone books and calling everyone with a Jewish-sounding name.

And despite grave risk of personal danger and arrest, they didn’t stop with warnings. Many citizens hid Jews in their homes until a rescue plan was in place and then spirited their countrymen to the Danish coast.


Once the Jews arrived, hundreds of fishermen, using commercial and private boats, ferried them across the Oresund Strait to the neighboring country of Sweden, which had offered them asylum. “As a result of the rescue, and the following Danish intercession on behalf of the 464 Danish Jews who were captured and deported to Theresienstadt transit camp in Bohemia, over 99% of Denmark's Jewish population survived the Holocaust,” Leo Goldberger writes in his book, The Rescue of the Danish Jews, Moral Courage Under Stress.

Ordinary people, obeying their consciences and taking stands for what was right, rescued 99 percent of the Jews in their country destined for genocide.


What if anyone of them had thought, I am only one person. What can I do?

Martyred Christians, innocent children, deceived young adults, and unborn babies. Who will be their champion? It only takes one to raise the battle flag—to pray, to speak, to write. To give, to work, to go. The pages of history remind us that God raises armies one soldier at a time.

Perhaps instead of asking What can I do?, we should be saying,

Here am I. Send me.




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2 comments:

  1. I think this story is amazing, too! I first heard about it in Lois Lowry's book Number the Stars.

    You're right that it's too much for one person to do, but we can do one thing, like befriend someone who is thinking of an abortion and showing them how much better it is to choose life. While that doesn't stop the millions of abortions that continue to happen, it does save one life. That's what God has been showing me lately: to befriend people and help them out, and doing that helps society. Does that make sense?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Absolutely, Nikki. It's biblical--that's how God wins the world--one person at a time.

      And you're right about Lois Lowry's retelling of the story. Disney also made a fabulous movie about the story called Miracle at Midnight. It's one of my favorite movies of all time.

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