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In February I went to visit my old friend Mrs Dorothy Boreham in Davers Court. She was very chirpy notwithstanding her 98 years. I am always pleased to hear Dorothy reminisce and while I was there she went back 92 years to the time her 14-year-old sister was dying of consumption. Mrs Kemp the wife of the Whepstead blacksmith went in to see her sister ever day. She invariably inquired if there was anything Dorothy’s sister fancied. Dorothy went on, "Mrs Kemp usually managed to come up with it although she had several children of her own to support. I don’t know how she did it. She were a rare good Christian." I very much enjoyed the fragrant memory of a caring woman’s kindness.
On Tuesday May 13th 2008 I read the obituary of Irena Sendler, a Polish Roman Catholic, in the Daily Telegraph. In Dec 1942 she was put in charge of the children’s department of Zegota - a charitable organisation that brought aid to the Jews. She worked in the Warsaw ghetto where 500,000 Polish Jews had been herded to await transportation to the extermination camps. When Irena Sendler realised what was happening she decided to save as many Jewish children as possible. Babies were smuggled out of the ghetto in toolboxes, coffins, suitcases and sacks. Irena Sendler kept a list of all 2,500 children saved in this way in the hope that one day she could reunite them with their families. On Oct 20th 1943 Irena Sendler’s house was raided by the Gestapo and she was taken to Pawiak prison where she was tortured. Although her legs and feet were broken, and her body left permanently scarred, she refused to betray her network of helpers or the children whom she had saved. I don’t know how she did it. The story of Irena Sendler has a happy ending. She was sentenced to death but managed to escape thanks to her organisation bribing a guard to set her free. In her latter years Irena was cared for in a Warsaw nursing home by Elzbieta Ficowska, who - in July 1942, at six months old - had been smuggled out of the ghetto by Irena in a carpenter’s workbox. It is salutary to read the gospel record of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. Consider what he suffered: a trumped up charge, gratuitous, casual violence, mockery, contempt, an unfair trial, scourging, a crown of thorns and death by crucifixion. He was misrepresented, manhandled, spat upon and in his agony on the cross was taunted by jeering, sneering onlookers. These were the people he had come to save!! How did he manage to endure it? Jesus must have asked himself if the human race was worth saving. He could have called it a day and been rescued by the angels of heaven. Yet he did endure it! And amidst all that suffering and in the face of all that evil he offered himself to God to atone for our miserable failures and innumerable shortcomings. I don’t know how he did it! But he did - and that is something for the Christian to shout for joy over. Christianity is not about guilt but forgiveness, not about repression but freedom, not about rules and regulations but grace. In the words of the old Sankey hymn:
Paid the great debt, and my soul He set free; Oh, it was wonderful - how could it be? - Dying for me, for me.
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