The Girl Who Waited For An Orange

     Chris and I love meeting new people.  Every person has a story to tell and a perspective of life that is all their own.  As a friend of Chris’s likes to say, “never give up an opportunity to meet a person for the first time.”  This was a meeting that comes back to my mind from time to time.

     I cannot even remember her name, but I will always remember her story.  She showed up one summer evening at our Coffee House home group.  She was an au pair for the summer and was thrilled to hear of a college age group that met not too far from her summer residence.  She was German and had big curly brown hair and was always joyful.  She attended our group faithfully over the summer and that is how we heard her story. 

     When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, she and her brothers and sisters had known nothing but life behind the iron curtain in Eastern Germany.  Luxuries were rare and freedom of religion even rarer.  Her father pastored an underground church in Eastern Germany and they had very little.  On the night that the great Wall of separation dividing East from West came down, her father took her and her siblings to cross over to the Western side.  She would have been about 15 or 16 on this historic night.  One of the places he took them to was a mall.   As she walked the mall she was overcome with the overabundance of everything.   Then her father found something she had never seen or touched or smelled before – an orange.  And so, on that night in Germany, she tasted her first orange.  She talked of the freedom that people had to just walk across the East-West border all night.  It was a night of celebration. 

     Years later, she came to America having heard of our freedom and she pictured what the church in America must be like.  But there were two things she could not understand.  Why, she asked, do the people of every color and language and class not come together on a Sunday to worship together?  Why are the churches so segregated?  Secondly, she wondered why we were not filled with more joy.  Why, in a country with so much freedom, are we not more joyful in our worship? 

     It was a sad thing for me to wonder about these questions along with her.  I could not give her the answers and I prayed she had not been disillusioned by her visit.  We shared a summer of worship, prayer, and laughter.

     This girl had waited and endured and escaped many things.  For fifteen years she waited.  She waited for the gift of one orange.  The waiting made it sweeter, and unforgettable.

     What do I endure every day?  What do I wait for and wait for and wait for?  As I fight to hold on to the truth, how many times do I contemplate risking my life, attempting to scale the wall that separates me from what I long for? 

He has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say,

“The Lord is my helper;

I will not fear;

what can man do to me?”

(Hebrews 13:5-6 ESV)

     My Savior never left my friend when she lived in a world of nothing but varying shades of grey.  He knew the longings of her heart.  He broke down the dividing wall and walked with her to the other side.

     I am longing for the day when I will cross over and My Heavenly Father will take me to see and touch and taste things I have never heard spoken of before.  And it will be so sweet.  The shades of grey will be no more and joy will be my constant companion.  I know that I will see the girl who waited for an orange amidst the worshipping throng of Heaven, and our faith will be our eyes.                                                                                     

                                                                                               ~ Your Fellow Sojourner