Telling Our Stories

Everybody has a story. You do. I do. How we tell it reveals a great deal about who we are and what we think about God.

As I write, it’s near midnight and I am seated in my hotel room in Berlin. Around the corner from my hotel is the Topographies des Terrors (the Topography of Terror). It is a deliberately-left-vacant city block on which once stood a collection of buildings that changed the course of history. One housed the Nazi Gestapo headquarters. Another was the SS Central Command. Another was the SS Security Office (SS = Schutzstaffel), Hitler’s personal (schutz) guard (staffel). A Gestapo prison also stood here. It was in these buildings that the Nazi reign of terror was conceived, hatched, and executed. The Holocaust was born here. The myth of Aryan superiority was imposed by force here. The torture and death of millions was literally managed here. The buildings were leveled during the war, but the basements remain. A sobering collection of photographs line a path across the basement floors, the hush interrupted occasionally by the sounds of Nazi voices recorded decades ago and intermittently broadcast across the vacant lot for effect. The whole effect is both creepy and chilling. Hitler came to power 75 years ago this year; this block tells a story, also.

Sections of the Berlin Wall still stand nearby, as well. That’s another whole story, the iconic emblem of the Cold War, the stand-off between East and West. Every inch of the Wall tells a story; crosses mark places where East Berliners lost their lives trying to break free.

These places are only a stage, though. The real stories have been lived. Today I walked with Wallentin Shula. He’s a German, born in what was the Soviet Union. His parents found themselves caught in the crosshairs of Hitler and Stalin, the War, and, ultimately, deportation deep into Soviet central Asia. Wallentin faced hair-raising persecution for his faith and German ancestry, growing up under Soviet Communism. Eventually, he escaped to the West. His is a harrowing tale, spanning generations— but told with a sense of God’s leading, of Providential protection and grace. A lesser soul might be bitter, asking “Why me, God?” Walletin, now 57, preaches the Gospel in Russian to the land that once oppressed him. Anatoli Derkach is 49. Just days ago I had dinner in his home in Ukraine. His parents were Christians. His father was one of 13 children; only two survived Stalin’s reign of terror in the 1930’s and lived to fight the Nazis in the 1940’s. Anatoli’s grandparents and eleven of his aunts and uncles were all deported to Siberian death camps—the Gulag—because of their Christian faith; all died there. After surviving the horrors of World War II, his father worked in the Ukrainian coal mines for the same Soviet government that had murdered the rest of his family. He never lost his faith in God, though, and introduced his son to Jesus. Anatoli grew up persecuted for his faith and then was drafted as a young man by the Soviet army. He refused to pledge allegiance to the Soviet state, on biblical principle; his life was held in the balance for six months, as the KGB tried to persuade him otherwise. He would not break; he survived. Now, Anatoli is a Church of God pastor in Mauripol on the Sea of Azov. I might have thrown up my hands and cursed God, given such a story. Anatoli sees God working for the good through it all and praises Him. Reading this, you might think, “Well, my story isn’t as dramatic as all that; mine is not so interesting.” Isn’t it? True, you may not have endured the tumultuous world of Wallentin and Anatoli. You may feel far removed from the Potsdamer Platz, the Topography of Terror, Hitler, Stalin, the Cold War, and all the rest.

But have you faced trouble? Has your world been turned, at times, upside down? Have you found life unjust or unfair? And, if so, how have you told your story? How have you interpreted it? And, what does that say about you and your relationship to God?

This I know: Walletin and Anatoli tell their stories in a way that glorifies God, without complaint. Extraordinary, really. They tell their stories in a way that blesses others and leads them to the same grace and peace that has sustained them. They tell their stories modestly, but in a way that inspires.

They tell their stories like Jesus tells His story. In a way that sees God-atwork, even in the most desperate hour. I want to tell my story that way, too. Jesus B, my friends. And, start working on your own story.
Genesis 50:20.