Gene Shelburne: A Lesson Learned in Europe
Although I’m part of the dwindling minority of Americans who were alive during WWII, when I was a young pastor, I still was surprised and a bit slow to understand the hesitance so many our older members expressed about visiting Europe.
The very idea of touring Germany or France excited me. I couldn’t wait to go. But it didn’t dawn on me that a lot of our people who were twice my age had parents or siblings buried in Normandy. Visiting the nation that had dispensed bloody death to
CROSS CURRENTS their loved ones didn’t sound like fun to them. It was hard for them to smile and be even mildly nice to a bistro waiter or a B&B owner who spoke the language of those who had killed their kin.
When my dear friend
Charlie Hargrave invited my lady and me to spend a month touring Europe with him, I could hardly wait to go. Our week in Greece was heavenly. So were our later weeks in Italy and Austria and Germany and France.
The hours we got to spend in art galleries like the Louvre and the Uffizi or in museums like Rome’s Borghese or London’s British Museum gave us lifelong memories.
Just getting to breathe the air in famous churches like St. Peter’s or Notre Dame thrilled my soul.
In the decades since that first Europe excursion, Nita and I have returned multiple times to roam the Continent. And it’s always been a positive experience. Not one time in those blessed days do I recall even thinking about the second world war.
Recent reflections on all of this alerted me to the troublesome truth that it’s not always easy for us to obey Jesus’ command to weep with those who weep.
I was born fifteen years too late to have to dodge German bullets, so I couldn’t identify with those who did. We tend to be blind to anguish and fear and pains we have not yet endured.
So, the next time you’re hurting bad and nobody seems to care—if you’re like the psalmist who moaned, “I looked for sympathy, but there was none” (69:20)— let me assure you that it’s probably not because your friends don’t love you.
They just haven’t walked where you’re walking. They don’t know what you are going through.
Gene Shelburne may be addressed at 2310 Anna St., Amarillo, TX 79106-4717 or at GeneShel@aol.com. Get his books or magazines at www.christianappeal.com.
His column appears weekly.