I Don’t Want to be the Christian Who Sings

I can’t stop thinking about a story I read about Christians during the holocaust.

These followers of Christ knew what was going on in their community. They knew people from their very town were losing their businesses and their homes and their rights and all this often ended with these people being taken away by train to the concentration camps.

One Christian interviewed remembered the train to the concentration camp ran right by their church and would often leave on Sunday mornings. This train would be filled with Jews and they could hear the crying and calling out and screaming as they were taken from their homes to what they knew would be an awful fate.

They could hear these screams as they celebrated their mass together.

“What did you do?” this Christian was asked. “You knew this was happening and what did you do?”

We sang louder. We could hear it and it was too heartbreaking to listen to so we sang louder.

They just tried to drown out what was happening with their singing.

They sat in a church and all they did was sing louder.

This story runs through my head on repeat.

Because there are so many things broken in our world right now, friends. Our very hearts can feel this if we choose to listen.

If we follow Jesus we cannot just stand in place and sing louder.

We cannot pretend it isn’t happening just because it’s hard.

We cannot pretend it isn’t happening just because we wish it wasn’t.

We cannot pretend it isn’t happening because God calls us to care for each other, even for the others that look different and are different than we are.

He asks us to do this all of the time. Each and every day. Even when it’s super complicated. Even when it means we lose something. Even when we just want to sing louder.

When we look back at history we often ask how people let awful things happen. How people couldn’t see what was right in front of them.

And now we are living it…and we can see exactly how they let it all happen. Because we are them. And looking away and staying in the safety of our little personal world is so tempting.

But I do not want to be the Christian who just stays in place and sings louder.

I don’t think you do either.

We have a chance in this world to really and truly be a follower of Christ. To be His hands and feet in this world.

The question is will we take it?