Good things come to those who wait

sermon by Manfred Schreyer

As I was flying from Washington to Germany, I was sitting besides a well-dressed woman approximately my age, possible a little older. When you fly for almost eight hours you start talking to anyone . . . and so we entered into a conversation. Somehow we hit it off very well. She told me that she had been in the U.S. promoting her product/patent and testing method for glass. She seemed to be a very happy woman and content and she shared her business success with me. I listened quietly as I was thinking of my own business life. She spoke very quietly, with some emotion, but very much in control of her expressions.

As we were talking, I asked her where she was born and where she grew up. . . . she told me that she grew up in Berlin Wilmersdorf. Wilmersdorf was part of Berlin that used to be in East Berlin . . . a part that was once occupied by the former Soviet Union.

I remembered that part of history fairly well, because I used to purchase antiques from East Germany and from that part of Berlin.

I replied: "Hmmmm" and as I asked more questions about her upbringing she retrieved into other subjects. It seemed as if she wanted to avoid any more of my questions about her past.

I first thought that she was part of the reunification of East and West in 1989, when the wall came down. The wall that divided the same German people. A wall associated with terror, death and dehumanization and a wall that robbed people of a deserving life. A wall built to keep people from leaving a dictatorial state.

She then told me that she had studied at the university of Dresden. Dresden the most beautiful city with her age-old castles, parks, beautiful landscapes, amplifying the Germany with her sense for architectural beauty, perfectionism.

This city also was in East Germany once occupied by the former Soviet Union.

And then she told me that she came over to West Berlin . . . as she was mentioning that part to me . . . she took a deep breath as if she had told me something that she should have not told me. As if she had disclosed a secret. I recognized her "spilling part of her story" and if you know me I had to dig deeper. . .

"How did you manage to leave?" (because East Germans were not allowed to leave East Germany under the occupation of the Soviet Union), I asked quietly. However, I felt was not sure if she wanted to reply to my very personal question.

She glanced into my eyes, and even in the dim light of the airplane I could feel some of the horror she had experienced . . . "I fled . . . ," she replied.

I paused for a while, because I perceived that she was uncomfortable discussing the subject. "Oh?", I said. "How?"

"I hid in the trunk of a car!" she fired back. She answered in a tone of voice that indicated to get the conversation over with.

I remembered the smuggling trick she mentioned. While I was a high school student, we visited West Berlin quite frequently . . . to party and we visited student gathering places where one could meet anyone. Often some people asked if we wanted to make 3,000.00 German Mark quickly by going to East Berlin and pick someone up and load the person in the trunk and smuggle them through the checkpoint.

Since I had my run-ins with the border guard before . . . I had always been unwilling to be led into such adventure and I knew if I would be caught I would be persecuted as an enemy of the state and I would receive prison time (without television, Nintendo, and a good book I might add). I knew I would be exchanged at some time for someone who was in jail in West Germany, but I was not going to count on it. So. . . . I left the subject alone.

I even remember a young woman whom I had gotten to know in East Berlin during my High School years, who worked in a restaurant who had begged me to find a way to leave East Germany. I knew what it meant to feel helpless. . .

As all these thoughts were going through my mind, the airplane I was in dropped due to air turbulence and I came back to my conversation with the lady.

"I paid $20,000 Mark" . . . an ungodly amount for that I thought . . .

Did you tell anyone that you were planning to leave? I asked "No, not directly" replied. "We often talked about the ones who left and we asked each other if we would do it. The only one who had always said no was my brother." And then she paused. "I did not speak to my brother for a long time after I fled from East Germany."

"After I left my mother and they interrogated my family" . . . "but they did not know anything, because I had not told them."

She said that she had prepared a list of relatives living in West Germany she would visit after she would arrive over safely.

"Did you ever think you would get caught by the East Germany border guard?" I asked as I remembered that many escapees got caught by heat detection devices by the border guards.

She starred at me. "You know", she said . . . "when you really desire to live a life of freedom, when you desire to say what you want to say, when you do not want to worry about tomorrow then it does not matter if you get caught, because it cannot get any worse. What matters is a better life. . ."

Then she said: ". . . Don’t you know I did it when I thought the time was right." I waited for a long time, maybe too long but I made it. And I think if you wait, and trust God, good things will happen"

"How true!" I thought. Good things come to those who wait . . .

How fitting that sentence was for the upcoming Christmas.

"Good things come to those who wait . . ."

God was making connection with us with the birth of Christ. He was coming toward us, And He is now asking us to escape the terror of this world, because he provides a method to leave a life of being told what is right, a life that holds us hostage and provides no freedom.

God offers us freedom . . . a journey into eternal freedom.

And He does not ask for any money in return . . . in fact He paid the price for the journey. There is nowhere you have to hide, all you have to say is that you are ready to come to freedom.

Christmas in fact was the birthday of the one who made the journey possible for us.

But there is even more to the story: When we pray or talk to our God we often believe we do not receive an answer, because we sometimes feel our prayers are not answered. The fact is that God listens all the time to our prayers. . .we only need to wait. Good things come to those who wait.

God things come to those who have trust in God. Good things do not come to those who are impatient and are doing their own thing, but it does come to those who wait. . .for God to speak to them and allow God to work in their life.