Joy in the Midst of a World Turned Upside Down

For those of you that like titles of a sermon, this one is entitled, Joy in the Midst of a World Turned Upside Down. Joy in the Midst of a World Turned Upside Down. And it's inspired by a visit that I made in Amsterdam two weeks ago when we first arrived in Europe. We recouped from jet lag. We had Friday to do a little sightseeing. We went to Amsterdam and John Carlin asked me, What would you like to see?

I said, What do we need to see in Amsterdam? He rattled off a list of things. One of the things he listed was the Anne Frank home. Would you like to see the Anne Frank home? I said, Yes. Let's put that at the top of the list and go there first. So we got on the train, went into Amsterdam, got off, started walking through the streets. Amsterdam was laid out on concentric canals, water. As you all remember from your geography classes, Holland is technically under water, but they do a good job of keeping the sea at bay. And a 20-minute walk, we were standing in front of a home that you would have walked by, not knowing what it was unless you were looking for it, except on this day there was a long line snaking around the corner into the back of the home of Anne Frank, what is called the Anne Frank House.

How many of you have read the diary of Anne Frank here? Quite a number of you. They quite a number had read it in Fort Wayne this morning. I have not, but after visiting the Anne Frank home, I will. That's going to be up on my list of things to read.

Anne Frank, as you know, most of you, was a teenage Jewish girl, who, along with her family, were in hiding for over two years in Nazi-occupied Holland during World War II. The Frank family was composed of a mother and father, Edith and Otto Frank. They had two daughters, Margot and their younger daughter, Anne. Otto Frank, the Frank family, initially lived in Frankfurt, Germany.

In the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party came to power, they quickly realized that, by their propaganda and where things were going, their safety in Germany could not be guaranteed. Otto Frank moved his business and his family to the Netherlands. The Netherlands at that time, which it still is, was a very tolerant society. In terms of ethnicity and religion, those of you that know your American history, you will remember that the Mayflower pilgrims sailed to America from Holland. They left the port of Delft and sailed to America.

They were in Holland because they had been driven out of England for their religious beliefs and found refuge in Holland because of its level of tolerance. This is in the 1600s. That tradition has continued. So Otto Frank moved his family to Germany. Otto Frank had a business of putting together spices, pickling spices, meat preservation spices, for the making of sausage, minced meats, and even jellies. It was a rather small operation, but one that he owned. He set up business in a row house on a canal there in Amsterdam.

The house in which he set this business up is one of these typical Dutch homes. It's a very narrow front, but a very long shotgun-type home that goes back much further. The reason for that is, in Holland at that time, you were taxed on the amount of frontage on your home. You didn't have a lot of frontage, but you had a lot of deepage going back.

That's why those row houses developed in Holland during those years. Remember, the Dutch settled New York City, New Amsterdam. In the older parts of New York, you have row houses, much along the same way as they do in Holland. Otto Frank set up his home there. The lower part of the house was where the operation was, the warehouse and the manufacturing aspect.

There were clerical offices on the second level. Above that, they had what was called the annex. It was several rooms up a very narrow staircase. It extended toward the back and over the warehouse area. It was not used for anything storage or whatever initially, because the Franks lived someplace else. As World War II developed, in 1940, the Nazis overran Holland. The government capitulated. They didn't put up much of a fight. The Nazis occupied there and began to clamp down their system and began to enact some very strict laws restricting the activities and freedoms of the Jews.

One of those was that no Jew could hold a business legally. Otto Frank re-engineered the ownership of his business and essentially turned it over to one of his employees legally on the books. He still ran it in the background, but it was legally on the books in the hands of a Dutch citizen, one of his employees, and he ran it that way. Then, in 1942, it became evident that as they began to round up Jews and deport them, that they were going to have to do something.

They had no place else to go, so he made the decision to take his family and go into hiding. So, he had the upper parts of the house converted into rooms. He had a bookcase built over a door to conceal the door that led up into that part of the establishment of the building. So, if you were just in that room, you'd think there was a bookcase and you weren't looking and suspecting anything, there would be nothing else there to look for. Otto, Frank, his wife, and his two children, Margo and Anne, went into hiding along with four other people.

Four other people. Another family of three and then one other individual, all Jewish. When they went into hiding, they essentially went up those steps and, for all intents and purposes, that's where they stayed. They would come down at night into part of the building to do a little bit of clerical work, but very little. But they didn't go back outside. And they were there for over two years.

You can read about that, you can discuss it, and then when you see something of that nature, it does really all come home to you. And it does make a very big impression to see something. The amount of space that these eight people were living in could be fitted into the kitchens that some of you have in your homes.

Rather large, modern kitchen, let's say. Not in my kitchen. Ours is rather small. If you can picture, let's say, a large, modern kitchen, maybe a little dining area with it, and then divide that up into rooms with a closet that had just a commode in it, and a sink for preparation, and a couple of rooms for the bedrooms, and maybe a set of little larger area that served as kind of a common room, and eight people living there.

Not for just three days, weekend, or a week, or a month, or six months, but for two years. They put glassine paper over the windows to keep the lights from going out at night, and at night they put darker curtains up there to keep any light out. They had to be very, very quiet because there was work still going on underneath the housing area, in the warehouse area.

And so they did not want the workers to know, or at least all the workers. A couple of workers knew what was going on because they were entrusted with their lives, but they didn't want the others to know, and so they had to restrict turning on the faucet. They had to restrict using the restroom to after hours, for the most part, because water running through the pipes would attract attention. They'd wonder what's going on up there, as you can well imagine.

The workers, the one secretary who knew family and what was going on, was charged with getting food to bring in for eight people. So she had to do a lot of the extra shopping. She did the shopping, and she brought the food in because they couldn't go out and do that. She had to be very discreet as to the amounts that she bought and where she went to buy it, so she didn't draw attention to the fact that she was buying quite a bit more food than just one or two people would normally have.

And this is how they survived. And it was in this setting, then, that Anne Frank sat down and began to write a diary, which is the only reason we know about them. You would not know about a family like this, a Jewish family in Germany, Holland, Austria, or wherever during that period of time.

And that story, unless there was a record that was eventually preserved for them to know about. And the only reason we know about it is because Anne Frank kept the diary. Initially, it was a little plaid diary-type notebook that she filled up quickly, and then she got other paper and notebooks that she continued to write in.

And through that, as those of you who have read the book know, she expressed herself, her feelings, her perceptions of all that was taking place and all that was going on in their lives during that period of time. And she seems to have been a rather interesting person. The very fact of writing a diary, day in and day out, keeping a record of one's thoughts in life for any period of time is a remarkable event. I've kept a journal off and on for a number of years. But to do it every day for any period of time takes discipline. And in her case, she understood and she realized that what she was doing was a part of her life. And it became something that she wanted to do in order to...she had hopes of one day getting back to a normal life.

And you can see that through some of the excerpts that come out in the diary. This brochure that I picked up there was listing part of that and what she had in her mind at this time. She said, Our little room looked very bare at first, with nothing on the walls. But thanks to Daddy, who had brought my film star collection and picture postcards on beforehand, and with the aid of a paste pot and brush, I have transformed the walls into one gigantic picture. This makes it look much more cheerful. And part of that is still there. Part of the original wall somehow was preserved, and they have pictures that she had pasted of film stars up there. She also had pictures of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, the British royal princesses, who Princess Elizabeth, of course, is Queen Elizabeth, and she had those up there. She dreamed of being a movie star. And through her writing, through her book, she expressed herself in such a way that we not only know about it, but in her life helped her to understand exactly what was going on in her mind, and to, I think, endure and to deal with the ordeal that they were going through. She said, I hope that I will be able to confide everything to you as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support. She hoped to eventually publish her diaries into what she called the Secret Annex. That was her title that she would have given to the book had she published. She even did a lot of revision of her diary entries as time went along. She wanted to be a journalist, or maybe a famous writer in any case, after the war. As time went on, they were getting, they were clued into news reports, and they knew what was taking place in the outside world. They even kept up with birthdays. There was one of the other family that was with them had a boy. His name was Peter. On his birthday in 1942, he received some presents, a board game, a razor, and a lighter. They did try to keep up a normal life through this period of time in order to deal with, again, just to keep things as normal as they possibly could, even though they couldn't go outside to even get a breath of fresh air. This particular brochure here just has a number of interesting comments from this and what they were having to go through and deal with. She said, one day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we'll be people again, and not just Jews. We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever. We will always be Jews as well, but then we'll want to be. Then we will want to be.

When I was looking through some of these diary entries and thinking about what was taking place, you have to realize, again, to put these things into the context, what the Holocaust did within the German nation was a rather unprecedented event in one sense, because, totally unexpected, because Germany was one of the most cultivated civilized nations in the world prior to World War II. Actually, during that period, even though World War I had already taken place, but they had produced Beethoven, Gerten, Schiller, and writers and musicians. They were civilized people, and to turn, as they did upon a religious or ethnic group as the Jews, and conceive an idea to completely obliterate them through death, is just ranked barbarism, and that it was done and sanctioned by the state, and people went along with it is one of the most tragic stories of modern history. But when you see that and you think about it, you realize that the fact that they did that just because they were Jews is a rather tragic situation. In Revelation 12, this thought came through in my mind as I was going through the house. In Revelation 12, this vignette of the story of the church down through time takes place. And from the time of Jesus' birth all the way down to the time of the end. And the Persecution, it's a chapter of Persecution upon the church. Verse 13 talks about the dragon that had been cast to the earth and persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child. But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle that she might fly into the wilderness to her place where she is nourished for time and time, and half the time, from the presence of the serpent. Satan is symbolized by the serpent here, and he is the one who is behind this age-long persecution of the people of God in the church. Verse 15 says, The serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Now, as I said, this chapter goes through an age-long persecution upon the people of God from the time of the birth of Christ, and very easy to document and chart that going all the way through, and you come down to these last few verses, and you're dealing obviously with a time prior to Christ's return, a time yet ahead of us, when a group of God's people who are identified as keeping the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ are targeted.

And again, you get into the story of the Holocaust, which is just a modern chapter of, again, an ages-long series of persecutions upon not just Jews, but God's people. This whole chapter here is more than just the Jewish people, but if you want to go all the way back to the time of Esther and the Persian period, you see the attempt at a Holocaust during that period with Haman and his idea that he concocted to kill all the Jews in the kingdom of Persia at that time.

That's the first hint at anti-Semitism, at least in ancient history, or in the Bible there, and the origins there. We've seen various markings of that down through this time. And, of course, the Jews have been targeted because they, of all the tribes of Israel, have retained their identity through the Sabbath and through their traditions. But the Sabbath, at least among the Orthodox and conservative Jews, is still there. And they have been targeted. And anti-Semitism is a very interesting study to get into to understand exactly what is at the heart of anti-Semitism.

And some of the readings have led me to conclude that really anti-Semitism is a hatred of God. It's not just Jews. It's a hatred of God and essentially centers on the law of God. And those who would keep that law and be identified with it will be targeted. And that's what this last verse here, chapter 12, verse 17, is talking about. Of people who will be targeted in this final persecution because they keep the commandments of God—all the commandments, not just the fourth—and they have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

And you realize that that is a sure prophecy and that will take place. And you don't know—you look at our modern world today and you might think, well, that will never happen again. Or how could that come about? And then you again dip your feet into the story of the Holocaust of the 20th century and you realize that it did happen.

And those things should not be forgotten. And then you read other scriptures, such as over in Mark chapter 13. Mark chapter 13. And Jesus here talks about betrayal and that people will betray one another. And in context, it's among the people of God. And in setting here this Olivette prophecy, he said in verse 11, When they arrest you and deliver you, do not worry beforehand or premeditate what you will speak, but whatever is given you in that hour, speak that.

For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. Now brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated of all for my name's sake, but he who endures to the end shall be saved. So Jesus warns of a time of betrayal, again on a scale that makes you stop and wonder, how would that happen?

How would a father betray his child? How would brother betray brother? And you live through certain situations. You live through certain trials. You live through certain church trials. And you can begin to understand certain things about betrayal, of trust, of confidence, of people that you thought you knew, and things that you would never have imagined to happen. And then you read again and you begin to ask certain questions. And again, with God's Spirit and God's help, these things can be sorted out and discerned.

But Jesus makes some very direct statements here. And again, when you look at what had happened on the large scale, say a national or world scale of the Holocaust of the Jews, that dimension, you ask the same questions you might ask on a smaller scale of one-to-one or collective issue of trials. How could something like that happen? It did. And this particular family lived through it. But I think through their experience, you get an understanding of how to deal with a trial, whether that trial is just between you and someone else, a trial of your own life and sickness, loss of a job, a challenge that takes place in your life, it throws you and challenges your faith, your belief in God, your confidence as a person.

Or maybe then it's a larger trial, maybe it is a church trial. Let's just use that as an example, which we are in the midst of right now. And those challenges are very, very trying, very, very hard. And you have to deal with that. And then you look at the story of Anne Frank, as she personifies, she puts a face to the six million who died in the Holocaust, six million Jews at least, there were others.

And then you realize that how do you get through that? How do you find joy in the midst of a world or a life turned upside down? Her life was turned upside down. You go through a trial in your own life, you lose your job, or you get faced with a diagnosis that could be very, very challenging. It reorients your life. It can turn your life, your world upside down.

How do we deal with that? How do we work our way through it? How do we work our way through a collective challenge in the church? Well, how did Anne Frank work through hers? She wrote a diary. She wrote down her thoughts. I've long understood, as well as many have, that writing out your thoughts can be very, very therapeutic in getting through a tough time. Whether it's just a letter to yourself or to someone else or a form of a diary or a journal. And when you read her journal, the excerpts that I've read indicate that there was a certain joy.

She tapped into a certain joy and a level of experience that allowed her. She put herself beyond that room, that annex, and she dreamed of a better future with the pictures that she had on her wall. And even as she anticipated that she might one day turn her diary into a book, as she started to even go through revisions. And it helped her to get through each day, through each week, through each month, and the various hardships of not being able to go and turn the water on just when you wanted to.

Or to go to the bathroom when you needed to. And the discomfort of living with eight people in a very small space for two years. This girl then, in a sense, became a personification of joy in the midst of a major, major world upheaval. And that's why when her diary was found and has endured to the level that it has. One night in 1944, June of 1944, an anonymous phone call was made to the German secret police saying, Jews are hiding at thus and such address, the very address of the Frank business.

They do not know to this day who turned them in. The Nazis showed up with their trucks. She'd seen the films. Loaded them in, carted all of them off to the death camps, scattered them.

And they took all the furniture out of the annex and scattered it as well. But they left behind her diary. And a lot of other papers didn't feel that that was important. Of those eight people, only one lived and survived. The father, Otto Frank. He came back after the war ended, 1945. And one of the workers who had gone into the rooms after the Nazis had carted them off, found Anne Frank's diaries. And she gave them to her, to Otto Frank.

And he read them, was astounded by what was revealed there. And the rest of the story is the story of the diary of Anne Frank. It's been translated into 65 languages. Movies have been made. A museum, a foundation has been perpetuated.

Her name, as I said, has become the personification of the idea of tolerance. And people working together, living together to get along and to prevent anything like that from ever happening again.

And we know about that because she kept a diary. And when you read that, the excerpts of it, which is all I've read, many of you have read the book, you see the testimony to that and we have that to look back on. And I think it is a lesson. Here's what I draw from it.

I think this is my personal conclusion after reflecting on the visit that I made there. That God gives us many different opportunities and things in front of us to see some of these principles that are throughout the Scriptures. And I got to thinking, you know, there are many lessons you could draw from the story of Anne Frank. But this one is very important, I think. And that you can study that and look at it and see that here's this teenage girl who had a level of joy in the midst of a life-changing experience.

Her world turned upside down and she employed certain methods to maintain her sanity in her life to get herself through it to the point that she did. I didn't have a Hollywood ending, as we know. But that's not the point because what we learn from it is something I think that God wants us to learn in terms of how we deal with the challenges that come our way. The trials that we must face individually and collectively. And one day the people of God who remain, as we see in Revelation 12, there will be a group who will have to endure something even larger.

But let's just think for today what you and I have to face in our own lives every day and how we get through them and what we can learn, what we should learn. I'll tell you what I learned going through this and it really attached to something else that I've been thinking about is I've had to deal firsthand and live through along with all of us.

The challenges that are before us in the church. But also what I've learned just in terms of one's personal, our personal challenges that we face as well. And that is that we, at some point, we better find a place to go to experience the things that God tells us to experience and that relationship with Him to see us through. Where we tap into Him. In other words, we start looking up rather than just at the around.

And if for a period of time we find that quiet place to go and hear the voice of God talk to us, and I speak symbolically here, not that you should go looking for God to talk to you, but where you go and you open your Bible and you read or you go and you kneel and you pray or you go and you sit and you meditate or you go and you sit and maybe write your journal.

Or you employ all of those combinations to process through where you are, what's going on in your life. We all need to find that. And we need to find those places so that we can center on God and look up rather than just look around. That's how we employ God's truth, God's Spirit, to get through. And if a teenage Jewish girl can teach us that, then let's learn from it. If it's something else that you learn or you tap into, that's fine, too.

But whatever you or I or any of us will be exposed to, to be drawn to that lesson, at some point learn it, employ it, and use it because it's what God wants us to do. In Psalm 16, this is a very encouraging Psalm. Psalm number 16. I think everyone needs to find their particular Psalms that speak to them at any given time and note those, mark them up, write them down in your journal or whatever.

In Psalm 16, David prays, They are the excellent ones in whom is all my delight. He delights in the saints, delights in his relationships that encourage him, that help him, that strengthen him. Their sorrows shall be multiplied, who hasten after another God. Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, nor take up their names on my lips. It's important to look up to God rather than to look around at the other gods with a little g that we might have in our life.

Checking account, the home, what's parked in the driveway, what might be the title on our door or the job we've attained, or something else. The status we feel we might have. Those are the modern gods with a little g or idols that entrap us today if we let them. It's important that we look to God and not be trapped by the little gods that are around us and those sorrows. Verse 5, He says, And finding that spot where we set God before us. You know, sometimes even in the midst of your day, if it's nothing more than five minutes, or fifteen, or whatever you can carve out, to in a sense set God before you, it's a good habit to learn.

Just in prayer or in thought. But there are certain times through the day where you may sense that you're going to wind to a point where you need a little bit of extra boost. And Starbucks just doesn't do it. You know that you need the spiritual strength to get you over the hump to get on through the rest of the day. Learning to withdraw for a few minutes is a very important discipline to your quiet spot.

And to put God, as He says, here always before you, because He is at my right hand. Then you're not going to be worried. Okay, it's all right. Now I can go on. Next, next phone call, next email, next appointment, next challenge, next moment of life. Learning to do that is a key to joy. That is a key to having joy in the midst of a world turned upside down. Verse 9, Psalm 16 is just one of those Psalms to understand and read at a particular point in time. There are other Psalms for other occasions as well, in that sense, to give you that little lift or reorientation. Or to have a compass check as we say at camp so often when we take 15 minutes to kind of pause in the day or start the day and reorient the students, campers, through a compass check so that we're pointed in the right direction, that we need to go inwardly, spiritually.

That is a key to that. In the book of Philippians, there is...the whole book is a book of joy because Paul wrote it from prison, as you know, and he sat down to write to the saints at Philippi, who gave him great joy and encouragement when he just thought about them. He talks about them in the first chapter. But down in chapter 4, which we know quite well, he brings this to a crescendo, and he says in verse 4, Rejoice in the Lord always.

Again, I will say, rejoice. Always. Not just when we're in good health, or we've had a good night's rest, or we feel on top of the world. Always rejoice in the Lord. Joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit, the second one that is listed in Galatians 5, after love. Joy is very much of an inward attitude and an inward approach to life, and to God, really. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

That peace of God is a very, very important quality to attain to. Paul is showing us here, again, he's directing us to the inner life of the Spirit, of our thoughts, which is a very important part of life to cultivate. The challenge of our lives in the Church, in the Church of God, is to do those disciplines of prayer, Bible study, meditation, fasting. Do those things that help us to develop that inner spirit in our life. How we do that is up to us.

Christ said, when you pray, go into a private place and pray, and your Father hears you in secret, will reward you openly. We read something like this, and he says, rejoice in the Lord. David wrote, put the Lord always in front of you. How do you do that? How do you put the Lord always in front of you? You know, in God's Church, we don't have little images of God to put right in front of us to remind us of things. We don't employ a lot of things to teach us the spiritual dimension of our Christian faith.

I want you to stop and think about that for a moment. What do you use? Do you have a cross around your neck? No. Do you have a phylactery or a row of things hanging down that aid you in some way? Do you have a rosary or prayer beads that you thumb through as you recite certain prayers? No, we don't.

And I don't castigate anyone who has those things. I'm just using an illustration. I want you to understand something. You go to the east and you will see prayer wheels. You will see various things. When we walk into wherever we have our church services, do you see candles that we light before people? You don't see any images of anybody, do you? We went through a lot of Catholic churches on this trip. Well, not a lot, but several big ones.

Those of you who have been into those churches, you know what you will see. Images of the various saints, Virgin Mary, paintings, candles that people light. Someone was telling me this morning that in certain Catholic churches they have electric candles now that light burn continually. Okay, but you will see people lighting candles in prayers and those things that are done. In Budapest, I went to the Jewish synagogue in Budapest, which is the largest in Europe.

It's the second largest in the world. It's quite a large building. It was an interesting tour. They had a little Jewish museum next to it that we spent about 40 minutes walking through. It was an interesting display case. It had all the ritual paraphernalia of Judaism that they use as they celebrate the Passover. Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Shabbat. They have coverings for the bread, for Friday night bread and meal. Special coverings, cloth coverings. They like candles. Of course, you know the seven-branched menorah of the Jewish faith. They have various prayer books that they read on Yom Kippur.

A prayer book for Rosh Hashanah, Day of Trumpets. They have a special set of knives for, guess what? Circumcision. It was just a display of all the different ritual paraphernalia that accompany the traditions of Judaism. And their teachings, which some of you and I would certainly identify as the truth of God, like the Sabbath and the Holy Days.

And as we got through that, Peter Eddington and I were doing that and he made the comment. We got to talking about it. He said, you know, you look at all that they have, what do we have? What do we have in the church to aid us in our prayers, to aid us in our worship on the Sabbath? Nothing. Do you have a special prayer book for the Sabbath?

No. You have the Bible. Do you have a special prayer book that you use on Yom Kippur? No. When Friday night comes, do you light a candle? No, not normally. You thought that it would be wrong if you do. I'm not saying that. But we don't have a special cloth to cover our bread on a weekly basis. And right on down the line, as they have these things, and certainly you look at Catholicism, that's a whole other dimension of ritual traditional paraphernalia.

That has been developed to express the divine, to express God, to express their worship. It is an integral part of Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and other religions as well. In the church of God, what do we have to symbolize our faith? But the only thing you could come up with is a piece of unleavened bread once a year. A little vial of wine. We wash each other's feet. Have I forgotten anything? My point is, we don't employ a lot of symbols.

We don't finger a rosary in our prayers. We don't wear things to symbolize our faith around our neck or in our key chain. But that doesn't mean we don't do things to demonstrate our faith and to develop our belief, our joy, our love, our confidence and faith in God. God talked about writing the law upon our heart through the Holy Spirit. The point I'm making is, we don't use physical things to do that. We use spiritual through a relationship with God.

So you stop and think about what we are called to in the church and how we build faith and how we develop a relationship with God. We don't use all that is a part of the world. It's interesting. That frees us to worship God in spirit and in truth. It presents us certain challenges because it's important that we do what we need to do to obey and to develop that walk of faith.

How do we develop love? Today we're talking necessarily about joy. Here's a young girl who wrote a diary, pasted a few pictures on a wall to give her hope and to express herself in the midst of a struggle. Her world turned upside down.

When our world gets turned upside down, do we do the right things to get us through? Whether it's a week, a year, two years, or five years, what do you do? What do I do? We develop the life of the spirit, the inner person. That, to me, was a very important lesson that I took from a visit to the Anne Frank home there in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago.

I'm looking at what a young girl did. I started to say, I think that we can look at things like that and who knows? Anne Frank was a Jewess. She was a part of a long tradition of Judaism. She died in the concentration camp. She'll come up in the second resurrection and she will have an opportunity to know the plan of God fully, completely. From A to Z, as all the others will. She stands out in our own modern experience. There's nothing wrong with you and I using her or anyone in that sense as a positive example of something that we need to do to develop our life, our spiritual life, to help us through and to get us through the challenges that are part of our life.

It's important to know that. She did it. Right up until, again, it was completely betrayed and turned inside out. She died a few weeks before her camp was liberated. I think it was Bergen-Belsen who was the one that she was in. But many people saw the value of that. Her own father did when he presented her diary. He made sure the home was preserved. He never let the furniture come back. Of course, the original was all scattered, but he said, the rooms that you go and see today, they're all bare.

There are no furnishings in there. The most important part has been preserved, and that's her writings. That's what's endured, and that's what is there. You walk through that with all different nationalities.

You see young people, old people there. There were a lot of young people there the day that I was there. Everyone walks through it silently, reading the various captions and things that are set up there in the displays. It's a very moving experience. I've been to the Holocaust Memorial in Israel, Yad Vashem, three different times. That, too, is a moving experience. It's a massive display of their effort to remember the Holocaust.

It's quite effective. This one is different. This puts a face to it. There was one quote on the back of this that was from a Jewish writer, Primo Levi, who himself survived the concentration camps. He said, One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did, but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way. If we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live. But she does personify all the others. It offers a remarkable example. Going back here to Philippians 4, verse 8, he says, The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me these do, and the God of peace will be with you.

Written by a man from prison. His freedoms have been stripped away during this period of time. He thought about the saints in Philippi, and he wrote this encouraging letter. These few verses here in chapter 4 point us to what we need to put our minds on in our lives to recapture, to maintain a sense of joy and perspective.

At times in our own world when it can be turned upside down. It is important to do so. To find that time, that place to go to and to develop that relationship with God. If only for a few minutes at a time, out of a day, or for an extended period of time, to certainly be strong in faith, in confidence, in hope.

Continually oriented to the Word of God, maintaining our faith, letting God's Spirit work upon our conscience, on our minds, and developing ourselves along these ways. When we do that, our whole world view changes. We do have the ability then to develop and to maintain joy when our world may be turned upside down.