Les Lignes

One thing about living in Europe is that you're always standing on world history. Stories that date back hundreds and hundreds of years and that in America, belong only in history books. And they're not only from centuries ago, some things have a much more recent tale. At youth group this year someone mentioned a woman living in a town nearby who is known for hiding Jewish children during World War Two and adopting them as her own. Sometimes I look around at the grandparents and great-grandparents in our church and wonder what their stories from those years of war are. What must they remember? What must they think of their grandchildren who think of the World Wars as history? Who wander through museums when they want to know more? Those years, however terrible, are a part of their stories and so, a part of ours.

My grandfather grew up in neutral Switzerland, but only minutes away from the border of Occupied France. Even though he was only very little during WWII, he remembers how Swiss people painted large white crosses on their roofs so they wouldn't be bombed and he remembers the bombing itself. We are so surrounded by history here and to us, like the people that live here, it's become part of the landscape. When we go to our friends' house that was built in the late 18th century, I have to stop myself to remember that it was built only a few years after America was born a country. Put into perspective like that, America is still a child compared to other nations of the world. The history here is very rich, but we don't stop enough to remember it.

All that to say, being the lovers of history that we are, a few weeks ago we drove about an hour to arrive on the front lines of World War One and the trenches of the French and German armies. We walked over the ground where, a hundred years ago, blood seeped into the ground as gunfire echoed off the surrounding hills and where men and boys gave their lives to save their country. As we walked through trenches that now look like deep furrows in the earth lined with stone and covered with heather, I prayed that I will never live to see war come to my country and that, if indeed encountered with it, I will face it with as much courage and steadfastness as they did.