daily java

Daily Java:

Above all, you must live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a manner worthy of the Good News about Christ. Then, whether I come and see you again or only hear about you, I will know that you are standing together with one spirit and one purpose, fighting together for the faith, which is the Good News.

(Philippians 1: 27)March 2, 1970 I stepped off the train in Germany at my base in Kaiserslautern. I had been in Germany for a day or two, having flown into Frankfurt. Now I was where I was supposed to go.

I traveled from Frankfurt to Kaiserslautern by myself on the train. That doesn’t sound like much until you have been somewhere where you do not understand anything said or written.

It was a totally alien experience. And I began to appreciate how children feel when they cannot read at all. But in this situation, I could not only not read, I couldn’t make myself understood.

I couldn’t event ell where the toilets were. After a while, I recognized the word Toiletten and figured that was close and went in one. To my joy, it was a restroom.

It was exciting to be somewhere so alien. The people were basically the same, they drove cars and ate food and wore clothing (most of the time). But things were different too.

One of the first things that really struck me was that the women didn’t have the same sense of modesty that American women had. Of course, you figure America came from a Puritan background. Europe came from a barbarian background. So the moral sense and backgrounds were so dissimilar.

At the swimming pool, people would change into their bathing suits out in the open. Girls bending over to look at produce in the European version of the mini-skirt would just about cause wrecks.

But in general, it was fascinating. I enjoyed going out and getting myself lost and finding my way back to the base. I almost became German. When I went back and married Ella and brought her back over to live for my last six months, we tried as hard as we could to become German in looks.

She was from German stock anyway, but I wasn’t. I was also a lot taller than the average German. But I got my hair cut at German barbers and wore German clothes, including shoes.

A lot of GI’s would wear German clothes, but would wear the black brogans from their dress outfits. That was an automatic giveaway.

We wanted to fit in. when we did, it seemed that we had a better time and didn’t stand out.

But even so, we were foreigners. We were American and had no desire to give up that citizenship. We were subject to German laws to a point, but ultimately, we were subject to American laws.

We became like them to a point, but were still strangers in a strange land.

That’s how we are as Christians. We live here, work her, do all the stuff here, but ultimately, we are citizens of a better place.

Even though we live here, we wait for a better place. And that place is heaven.