In the
United States and the nations of Europe preparations are underway to celebrate
Christmas as first and foremost a tribute to materialism. These
increasingly agnostic and secular societies are not only willfully choosing to
ignore the existence of God but they are rejecting the moral and behavioral
guidelines established by Judeo-Christian teachings. They are, as a
substitute, placing more and more trust in mankind. The ultimate
consequence for a society that chooses this misguided reliance and the reality
of God’s outstretched helping hand is embodied in the story of a young boy from
the streets of a nameless city in an unknown country.
World
War II has ended and somewhere in central Europe, a small, frail, solitary
figure, his clothes in tatters, gingerly walks around the piles of rubble and
broken glass on the streets of a once-bustling city now lying in ruins.
The few still-upright walls, their windows and doors blown out, appear as
skeletons framed against the blue sky. No one knows this boy’s age, his
name or to whom he was born. After the death of a woman he had lived
with--perhaps a relation, but perhaps not--he was on his own.
Along
with other abandoned children, his daytime hours were spent in the never-ending
pursuit of surviving for another day. The search for food was their
constant companion. Oftentimes they begged from the locals or foreign
soldiers stationed nearby, or, as a last resort, they rummaged through the
garbage cans outside of military mess halls.
At
night, the least destroyed of the nearby buildings with a remnant of a roof
overhead served as a shelter from the elements. But no one could escape
from the constant stench of death and destruction in the air.
As
the sun rose on a day which promised to be like so many before it, the boy was
making his usual morning rounds when he heard a woman’s desperate
screams. Running to the scene, he saw a teenaged girl pinned against a
wall as a soldier was tearing at her clothing. Instinctively, he picked
up some ever-present broken bricks and began throwing them at the assailant.
After a few bricks found their mark, the man released the girl, allowing her to
escape. He then turned, pistol in hand, to confront his tormentor.
Scrambling to run away, the boy heard a loud noise and felt the bullet entering
his back as if hit by someone swinging a baseball bat followed immediately by
an excruciating burning sensation as he fell to the ground. After falling
forward from the impact of the bullet, he got up and ran some distance before
passing out.
When
the boy awoke, he was in a military hospital, being treated for a gunshot wound
and malnutrition. For the first time he could remember, he slept in a bed
and was fed three meals a day. After recuperating, he was placed on a
train and taken on a long journey to an orphanage near Bremen, Germany………….
