Trapped behind a Wall

berlin wall

If you were born in East Berlin, Germany in 1961, you were born in captivity.

East Berliners lived behind 15-foot-high concrete walls, prisoners in their own city.  Escape was attempted, seldom achieved. The fear and frustration continued for three decades. Friends and relatives lived just feet away, on the other side of the wall; death threatened any physical attempt to visit. Travel eastward was permitted but freedom was in another direction.

Like the citizens of Berlin, we are born prisoners, already dead in sin. (Ephesians 2:1)

Freedom and peace are available. “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:1) We have “the kind of peace that sends people onto the streets after a war has ended.”

That’s what happened in East Berlin. 

On November 9, 1989 the Spokesman for the Central Committee of Germany’s Communist Party was asked “‘Herr Schabowski, when will your citizens be allowed to travel freely? Perhaps he was carried away by the rapidly deteriorating events inside his country.  Whatever the reason, nobody in the room – nor anywhere around the world – expected the reply which was to follow. ‘They can go whenever they want, and nobody will stop them.’” [i]

28 years of captivity ended within a few hours. People were climbing the walls, running in the streets. A war had ended. They were free.

They believed what had been told them and acted.

Trust is how we are freed from sin. Faith is how our fear and frustration are cancelled.  Belief is how we can go in the spiritual direction we crave without sin controlling our movements. The walls that trap us have collapsed.

 

 

[i] Durschmied, Erik. How Chance and Stupidity Have Changed History: the Hinge Factor. MJF Books, 2005. Chapter 16