I want to recommend a delightful book to you this week. It’s called “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr. Just this month Netflix came out with a 4-part series based on the book. It’s directed by the same director who put together “Stranger Things” if you are into that series. Cydy and I just finished watching it…it is absolutely spell bounding! The story takes place in a time similar to our time, a time of war. In this case it’s set during WW 2 in France. Before the war a professor starts to produce a radio broadcast for children. He broadcasts it every night and, in his broadcast, he shares interesting scientific facts about light along with a plethora of amazing stories and truths about life, beauty, love, and hope. In a sense it’s a radio station all about what I would call “God’s River of tender-loving kindness.”
Children all over the world tune in and two of them are an orphan boy in German, Werner, and a blind girl in France, Marie-Laure LeBlanc. Early in the book Werner, an orphan boy who lives in a German coal mining town close to the French/German border, starts listening to this radio station and it captures his heart. He can’t get enough of this this professor and his fascination with light! He loves it so much that even though it is a direct order by Hitler not to listen to any other broadcast but the official radio station of the Nazi party…punishable by death…he does anyway. (By the way, here's a youtube clip on the cool story of the blind actor who plays Marie-Laure LeBlanc... VIDEO)
One day the SS officers knock on the door of the orphanage. You can feel the fear in the room. Everyone knows about Werner and his radio. They all think the SS is coming to take him away. Well, in the end they do, but not because he broke the rules, but because they have heard rummers about this boy-wonder who knows so much about radios. They want him to help them win the war!
As they take him away…his sister, Jutta, also in the orphanage…comes up to Werner and says something like this: ”You remember that radio station Werner? the one about truth, love, and beauty…well take that frequency and put it in your heart. Do you hear me? Don’t ever lose that frequency, Werner. Stay true to that frequency…it will save you.”
In so many ways this is what I hope Bear Creek UMC is and will continue to be: a “radio station” of sorts broadcasting truth, love, and beauty. This is what we try to do every Sunday. This is what we do when we put together Thanksgiving baskets for single mothers and their families. This is what we do when we have a card night to raise money for turkeys. This is what we do when we put on a Trunk or Treat for the neighborhood. This is what we do when our Stephen Ministers put on a grief workshop. This is what we do when we have our booth at the Pride Parades in our area. This is what we do when we send boots and raincoats to Riverside Park UMC. This is what we do when we work to bring the Kin-dom of God to this world. This is what we do when we worship and invite folks to join us. We keep the frequency of God’s love alive in a world that seems always to be losing their way. And by doing that, over and over and over and over again, we are giving the greatest gift of all to the world and to ourselves…we are creating a community that is in essence God’s love.
May we always give our hearts to reshaping the church into that calling that comes from God’s frequency.
Your friend and pastor, always trying to tune in with God and with you, Brook