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A reflection and prayer to start the day with Canon Simon Doogan.

Good morning.

Following the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a parishioner passed me a book on the subject by ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ journalist Laurence Rees. I felt there were one-point-one million reasons why I should read it.

The final chapter shared the testimony of survivors, and after the SS had fled, ten-year old twins Eva and Miriam Moses Kor were left largely on their own. Breaking through the perimeter fence, Eva walked to the edge of the Sola River bounding one side of the camp to crack the ice and get water.

Suddenly, she saw a little girl about her own age on the opposite bank. To Eva, wearing rags and swarming with lice, the sight of a prettily dressed child with ribboned hair and carrying a satchel was almost unbelievable. ‘There was a world out there with children who looked like children, and who went to a school’, she said.

The Promised Land on the other side of the Jordan must have acquired a similarly mythic quality for the children of Israel. Where according to Deuteronomy it was revealed to Moses that he would die without crossing the river, most of Auschwitz’s victims received no prior warning. But Eva’s incredulity also raises for me the real or perceived differences that often emerge between life on one side of a river and life on the other.

If it took God to stop the water of the Jordan, and bring Israel over on dry ground, perhaps all the great gulfs require a miracle to cross them from captivity to freedom, deprivation to plenty, adversity to opportunity.

Thank you, Lord, that in Christ you reach out to us still across the water, bridging the gap, and calling us to that place you prepared for us in the beginning. Amen