“‘She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’–which means, ‘God with us.'” – Matthew 1:21-23

On March 28, 1945, one of the closing battles of World War II in Europe was winding down. Just east of the Rhine River, German teenagers and old men tried to hold off the more powerful American army. There was an unusual quiet that morning.
Dr. Karl H. Schlesier, a German soldier, remembers this time: ” I looked over the hole I shared with a buddy and saw no life but a movement in the busted roof of a farm house about 200 yards away,” Schlesier said. Feeling sudden panic, Schlesier stood up in his foxhole and fired four rapid shots at nothing in particular.

The eerie silence was broken by a single voice. A lone American soldier had walked.calmly toward the entrenched Germans, saying in a calm and low voice, “Come on out. Come on out.”

Schlesier remembers: “The American soldier had two machine guns trained on him, and we were sure he knew this, but he just kept on coming. To have shot him would have seemed like murder because he was not a threat. He just wanted us to give up.”
The Indian soldier told them to put their hands over their heads. Then he turned and walked toward the American lines without looking back as the German soldiers followed.

Schlesier was overwhelmed: “He must have been the most reasonable man, the most perceptive, the most understanding, and by far the most brave. We had not expected to live, and he must have seen how idiotic this wall was, and he acted on his own to save us, risking his life in the process. Later in the prisoner-of-war camp we talked about him. If he had not come to get us, we would have died in our foxholes. His action was a personal one. He was not ordered to do what he did. I owe him my life and have lived it.”

Some two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ came to warring man and asked us to come on out and return to God. He offered His own life for our sins so we may become His brothers and sisters. Today in prayer, give thanks to the Lord and surrender all of your life to Him.

“If you don’t surrender to Christ, you’ll surrender to chaos.” – E. Stanley Jones

God’s Word: “so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.” – Hebrews 9:28

By Peter Kennedy, Copyright 2004, Devotional E-Mail DEVOTIONS IN MATTHEW pkennedy6@yahoo.com