Unlikely Miracles in Hard Places

 1941 Paris under Nazi occupation. Jews had to wear a yellow star and were deported and murdered en masse.

A seven-year-old Jewish boy was visiting a Christian friend, but stayed too long. There was a curfew for Jews. After 6 pm, he risked being arrested in the street.

He turned his jacket inside out to hide the yellow star and made his way home.

But then his nightmare got worse. A German officer in a black SS uniform approached him.

It wasn't a dream, but then, as in a dream, the tables were turned.

The officer hugged him lovingly and spoke to him in a friendly way, even though the boy didn't understand German. Then he showed him a photograph of a boy, perhaps his son. And it got even better. He gave the astonished boy some banknotes and sent him home with more kind words.

The boy and his family survived the Nazi era, and they settled in Israel after the war. The boy never forgot the kind SS officer. Fascinated by the contradictions of human nature, he studied psychology.

He became a psychologist in the Israeli army and then went to America to do his doctorate.

He became a world-famous author and Nobel laureate.

Are you perhaps in an inhuman situation like this SS officer? But there is a good God who has good plans for you.

Oskar Schindler was a wealthy businessman and Nazi member. He used his position to save many Jews.  

I met a Russian woman. Her father was a communist, but her mother took the children to the church while her father was politically active.

A German concentration camp commandant used his position to save many Jews. He helped the Jews to build hiding places in the camp so that the SS could not find them.

As a young Christian, I was cruelly abused in an authoritarian church. I had a nervous breakdown and needed intensive psychiatric help. I spent a whole year in hospital, but God still had good plans for my life.

When I returned home, I visited other patients and encouraged them to trust in God.

The Apostle Paul was cruelly persecuted, flogged and sometimes imprisoned, but he used his imprisonment to pray for persecuted Christians. He also wrote letters to the churches. These letters are now books of the New Testament.

What is your situation like? Probably not ideal. Perhaps a nightmare.

Jesus wants to rescue you from your predicament, but perhaps not overnight.

Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch woman who ended up in a concentration camp in Germany because her family had been hiding Jews. She suffered terrible ordeals, but even in the concentration camp she served as a missionary.

Her sister was murdered in the camp, but she was released one day because of a clerical error by German officials.

After the war, she became a travelling evangelist, also in Germany.

Is your situation very difficult? If it's possible to escape a brutal marriage, it's probably all the better. Maternal care and the safety of the children outweigh the obligation to stay in the marriage.

If you are being victimised in a legalistic church, you may not be allowed to leave, but such rules do not come from God.

But even if you can't escape your situation, God can help you to be a blessing to others.

The apostle Paul vividly describes his trust in God in the midst of adversity.

We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;
persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 2 Co 4:8–10 NIV