“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence” (Isaiah 64:1).
This date in 1938, a report from the American consul in Leipzig. “Having demolished dwellings and hurled most of the movable effects to the streets, the insatiably sadistic perpetrators threw away many of the trembling inmates into a small stream that flows through the Zoological Park, commanding the horrified spectators to spit at them, defile them with mud and jeer at their plight…. The slightest manifestation of sympathy evoked a positive fury on the part of the perpetrators, and the crowd was powerless to do anything but turn horror-stricken eyes from the scene of abuse, or leave the vicinity. These tactics were carried out the entire morning of November 10 without police intervention and they were applied to men, women and children” (Saul Friedländer, “Nazi Germany and the Jews,” I, 277).
Not only Kristallnacht; where’s God in millennia of suffering? Not where we would naturally expect God to intervene. Not in might but in weakness. “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3-4). The cross of Jesus led to His exaltation as Lord over all, suffering cross to glorious crown, the bringer of our final deliverance. Such is the hope for us who follow Him. “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). Our faith is not a museum of the past. Because of the past, faith looks forward in hope.
O Savior, rend the heavens wide; Come down, come down with mighty stride;
Unlock the gates, the doors break down; Unbar the way to heaven’s crown.
Sin’s dreadful doom upon us lies; Grim death looms fierce before our eyes.
O come, lead us with mighty hand From exile to our promised land.”
(Lutheran Service Book, 355:1, 6)