From Brokenness to Awe.

Image © by Brian E. Faulkner

The journey toward faith can be rough, the road long before what Franz Mohr called the “emptiness in the heart of any human being” gets filled in. Mohr, who for many years was the concert tuner and technician to legendary Steinway-sponsored pianists like Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein, describes his spiritual journey in a lively and thoughtful book called My Life with the Great Pianists.”

At seventeen, Mohr witnessed – and then experienced - saturation bombing by the Allies of his hometown of Duren, Germany. He sat on the roof of their home and watched the first wave of B-17s come in, then retreated with his family to their bomb shelter.  While his mother cried out to God for protection, something inside Franz snapped, and he cried out, “Mom, shut up. There is no God! There will be no protection! There will be no deliverance!  If there is any God, how can he allow something so terrible?  No, there is no deliverance.  We will all die together like cattle right here.”   

Their house got hit directly, and Franz clambered up through a hole in the debris and began running toward the edge of town, his hair on fire, his face burning.  He ended up at a relative’s in the country.  Franz’s mother and father survived the bombing; his brother Peter did not.

“Christmas 1944 was very sad, indeed.”

At war’s end, infinitely more horrible news finally burst into the light: Germany had exterminated more than 6-million Jews.  Franz had watched the authorities pack Jews who were their dear friends and neighbors into boxcars for transport to the death camps (the Mohrs thought at the time to work camps).  Franz asked himself, “Where was God in all of this?” 

“My heart became extremely bitter,” he wrote. “I was filled with hate against the war which had shattered my world and my faith.  I was filled with hate against the Nazis, who had started the whole mess.  I saw war as a chain reaction of hate, hunger for power, greed, aggression, and retaliation.  I thought, if only someone would repay hate with love, then this whole war business would stop.”

In time, young Franz fell in with some Communist youth, who painted a bright picture of the future - without God.  Then an Englishman gave him a Bible, which remained unopened on a shelf in his room.  But something the man had read to him from that Bible stuck in his mind: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”  Try as he might, he couldn’t erase the words from his mind.
  
“How I hated what that war had done to us.  But in the back of my mind was one ray of hope.  There might be one door open for me.  There, up on my shelf, was that Bible.  I really was afraid to take it down to read, because the door of hope might then close!” But he gave the Word a try, beginning on page one.  The story of Cain and Abel provided immediate perspective.  “I thought, here is the first family created by God, and in this family there is already war!  I began to realize that man is responsible for what he does by choice, and that I could not blame God for war.”

Franz then began to fret about the “miserable life” he was leading.  “I will work on myself,” he decided, “live a better life, and then go to God and simply say, ‘Please accept me.’”  But “how can one live a better life?” he mused.  “How can one get rid of the kind of hate I have in my heart?” 

One night, after walking in frustration until nearly dawn, Franz got down on his knees just as light appeared in the east.  He thought of the two criminals who had been crucified on either side of Jesus, especially the repentant thief, to whom Christ had said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Then and there, he became overwhelmed by the love of God. Kneeling in supplication, all Franz could say was, “Thank you, Jesus, thank you.” At last he was free of the immense hatred that had haunted him!

What compels people like Franz Mohr to allow God into their lives after so much suffering? It is Grace, the unmerited favor of God, the power of Christ to transform those very lives.  Like a person I once knew, a man with a seriously inflated view of himself. After making a consistent mess of things in his business and family, he decided to end it all with a razor blade. Suddenly, standing on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor where he would breathe his last in a pool of his own blood, this beaten man dropped to his knees - in tears - and was overcome with awe as the Savior bloomed in his heart. 
 
Even in a world suffering such travail as ours, travail that seems to go on and on without end or remorse, how can one not praise such a Savior, a Savior who does not need our help, only our confession and assent, to save us?!  

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