Good morning, friends.
Our verse for today comes from Acts 9:17, “So Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’”
In German-occupied Europe during World War II, killing centers were just what they sound like. They were facilities established exclusively or primarily for the assembly-line style mass murder of human beings. The first victims were part of something called the T4 Euthanasia Program. This euphemistically-named program targeted individuals who suffered from physical or mental disabilities, who the Nazis believed were a genetic and financial burden on the German society and the Aryan race. Initially, prisoners who suffered from psychiatric, neurological, or physical handicaps were offered the opportunity to be transferred to another camp, and they volunteered willingly, thinking they were being relocated for treatment. But when the trucks returned to camp loaded with only their empty clothes, the remaining prisoners realized their fate. From then on, the volunteering stopped, but the killing did not. Soon after, the Nazis began their crusade of the Final Solution, which was to be the genocide of the Jews. The killing center in Chelmno was followed by ones in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka to systematically murder the Jews of Poland. In eighteen months, more than 1.5 million Jews were killed by carbon monoxide gas from diesel exhaust. But the largest killing center was in Auschwitz. At its most deadly, it had four gas chambers and killed an average of 6,000 Jews each day.
The organization that operated these death camps for Hitler was known as the SS (Schutzstaffel, meaning protection squadron). It began as essentially a guard unit for Hitler as he began to gain political notice early in his career, and turned into the foremost agency for German oppression and terror until the end of the war. Leading the SS was a man named Heinrich Himmler, who hated Jews and others as much as, if not more than, Hitler. It was a Himmler that Ananias the Jewish Christian was sent to. Left to his own desires, Saul was consumed with eliminating the followers of Jesus. But God sent Ananias to him, and when he got there, he greeted him as brother Saul. God had transformed Saul, and Ananias trusted God. The dreaded enemy had become a brother. Saul would persecute no more. Even when things don’t make sense, or worse, God is still in control.
As we seek Him today, thank God for so much that you have to be thankful for.
Have a blessed Wednesday.
#4 Rich Holt
Dad of Ripken, Koy, TrishaJean, Samantha, Kakie Holiday and Raleigh
Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.
