At the end of November, 1989, we welcomed Stephen Davis into the world.
At the very same time, the Berlin wall was coming down. I remember watching it on television—me, the young mother who had been suffering with debilitating morning sickness, exhausted by my pregnancy, trying to keep up with an energetic two-and-a-half year old—watching the jubilant crowds chipping away pieces of that notorious wall, and asking my husband, “What in the world is happening?”
What in the world.
On the other side of that wall—to be more accurate, on the other side of the entire Iron Curtain—a one-year-old girl was being raised in Belarus, part of the U.S.S.R. that became no more.
Our lives moved ahead, so we thought, more or less as they would have if that Wall, that Curtain, had never come down. Hers, on the other hand, was clearly and radically changed.
Maya left Belarus to go to school in Lithuania, where she met Jesus Christ and became a child of God. From there, she went to a Christian college in the United States.
When she came to South Carolina as a translator for some Belarussian children, she met the young man who had been born when the Berlin Wall came down.
Today they will be married. Hearts and hands are joined, across the broken wall, beyond the torn curtain.
Oh, did you think this was about another broken wall? Maybe the one of Ephesians 2? Jesus Christ “is our peace, who has made both [Jew and Gentile] one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us.”
Or did you think it was about another torn curtain? Maybe the one of Luke 23 and Hebrews 10? “And the curtain of the temple was torn in two” and Jesus made “a new and living way opened to us through the curtain, that is His body.”
But look! It’s the same God who does it all. He is the Breaker of walls of separation. He is the Tearer of dividing curtains.
We stand in awe of His mighty work, in both physical and spiritual realms.
All over the world.
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Oh, Rebecca how very beautiful. Just beautiful!
Rebecca,
Another sweet connection! I am Lithuanian as well, speak it, read it, write it, though as family passes my opportunities to read and write go with them. We recently divinely met a man taking a picture of his elephant ear at a county fair to send his girlfriend in Lithuania who teaches English at a Christian college there. What a pleasure to meet a girl from Philly who chose to serve God even as war rages just a few hundred miles away in a country with a target on it’s own back. No doubt you have learned many interesting phrases and cultural differences. Paganism runs deeeep among those people. Praise God there is gospel truth to be found in every corner of this world! Blessings on their anniversary.
Thank you so much, Daina. This is beautiful!