The Lady in the Lobby

We met her in a hotel lobby on the Sabbath.  Two days before Ted and I had fled from filthy, dirt and sand-covered Cairo, flew on a dilapidated Egyptian plane to Cyprus, a required stopover when leaving an Arab country to enter Israel.  At the bottom of the plane steps was a shallow vat of disinfectant through which we had to wade before stepping into the neutral island airport.  After a good night's sleep and a swim in the warm Mediterranean, there we were in a Tel Aviv hotel on a Sabbath afternoon. We wanted to proceed immediately to Jerusalem but quickly learned from the desk clerk that no transportation moves on the Sabbath in Israel.   Behind us a woman's lovely voice said: "I'm going to Jerusalem today.  Would you like to ride with me?"  We thankfully climbed into her car and for the next hour or so this Jewish lady's story gripped our hearts. She was a political Zionist that we soon realized had spotted us as possible monetary contributors to her cause of reclaiming Israel from the Arabs. ...through human efforts.   The only one of her German Jewish family who survived the Holocaust, she was freed by an RAF pilot who escorted her from Auschwitz and transported her to London.  Her own screams of horror that could finally be voiced awoke her into full consciousness as she ran down a busy thoroughfare.  In time, somehow she made her way to Jerusalem where she met many other Jewish Holocaust survivors who had escaped death in Hitler's ovens.

This Lovely Lady invited us to her flat for dinner. Her husband was lecturing in America at Yale so we were not privileged to meet him.  Around her table were fifteen or sixteen Jewish doctors from eight different countries.  The Israeli nationals do not have a way to meet the hundreds of thousands of people who travel around Israel by bus. We were travelling alone and were accessible. Ted and I knew we were being set up but anticipated that Jesus might have had something to do with it.  One by one, these brave survivors told us their story. With each, our hearts broke into more pieces.  Around 2 o'clock  in the morning, one doctor asked us;  "What brings you to Jerusalem?" ...and with that opening we told them our story.  Not one had ever met anyone who actually believed that Jesus was and is the Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world.  Slowly it dawned on us that in Israel, if one is not a Muslim or a Jew, one is assumed to be a "Christian".  That means that in their thinking Hitler was a Christian.  ...the Big Lie!  These people detected the greed of the Rabbis and wanted nothing to do with the synagogues.  They revealed that they had been studying the Old Testament together for five years and that soon they planned to open to the New.  I don't want to overdramatize this night, but it was a night only the Lord could have orchestrated.   ...a night I have never forgotten.  I would like to tell you that all dropped to their knees and invited Christ into their hearts. That didn't happen. I don't know what happened after that night which finally ended in the early hours of the morning.

The next day the Lady in the Lobby and I met to explore Jerusalem and to shop.  On my mantle are two brass candlesticks adorned with Israeli writing that she and I bought in the underground market of Jerusalem.  While walking and lunching I further gently explained to this Lovely Lady Who Jesus is and told her of His transforming work in my own personal life. She seemed to listen, but I don't know if she heard.  Upon our return home a week later I received a letter from her,  asking for our help in procuring  the release of two incarcerated Jewish doctors whose plane had been hijacked on its way to Beirut.  She assumed that Ted and I had leverage in high places. We did. ...with Jesus, but that's not who our Lady hoped we would contact for help. We were a poor pastor and wife who had been given a trip by a couple who noted that we were suffering from pastoral fatigue.  Did our Jewish friend ever receive Christ into her heart? I do not know. We communicated by letter for awhile but when she realized that we would and could not help free the doctors from an Arab prison, she stopped writing.  Oh, dear Lord, have you sent other messages of Your love to her?  Is she with You in Heaven? Will she be?

Before we had departed for this much needed rest we were ensnarled in a heart-rending war between the Calvinists and Armenians in our city.  Individuals and whole churches were being split apart. Our beloved church was dividing....the church in which we had invested every ounce of our resources, including our precious three children who hadn't signed up for the pastorate.   Ted and I, because of our place in the Christian community were sucked right into the middle of it all.  My heart was beyond troubled.   I was dangerously close to running, screaming in pain down a Bakersfield street. God took us half way around the world to give us (me) restored courage to press on. Ted never seemed to lose his courage. No matter how he was abused by power-grabbing elders or other minions of Satan, he never flagged.  To this day I will flee when Christian wars loom on the horizon.  I dropped my guard earlier this week and almost became enmeshed in a church conflict. Clearly, the Lord said to me: "Mind your own business."  I fled.

Sometimes I honestly do not care if I am a Pre, Post, or A Millenialist,   REformed  or DEformed theologian.  I know that I fully expect the Holy Spirit to feed His Truth into a precious little gathering of women in my living room who today will open our Bibles to Romans 9.  These women have been freed from the religious prisons of Buddhism, Shintoism, Hinduism and other man-made "ism's".  I do not believe that we need a seminary graduate or a pope or a pastor to complicate the Gospel that Jesus has made so simple that a child can understand it.

                       PRECIOUS OLD SONG: WE'RE MARCHING TO ZION

Thus let our songs abound, and every tear be dry
We're marching through Immanuel's ground,
We're marching through Immanuel's ground
And thus surround the throne,
And thus surround the throne.

WE'RE MARCHING TO ZION; BEAUTIFUL,  BEAUTIFUL ZION
WE'RE MARCHING UPWARD TO ZION, THE BEAUTIFUL CITY OF GOD.

Love, Jo