Posted on 02/17/2018 9:11:42 AM PST by Salvation
It is my usual Friday routine to feature a video (often a commercial) and draw some biblical or spiritual principle from it. The video below is no commercial; it is post-war footage from Berlin in July of 1945. Interestingly it is in color, but it can only be described as eerie. People walk about among the ruins in something of a daze. Not a word is said throughout. The people appear to be trying to get back to “normal” life in the middle of a city that has been reduced to rubble. Some have injuries: one man is missing a leg, another an eye. A bucket brigade works to clear away some of the rubble. Throughout, silence and sadness permeate the footage. The Berlin gate is still open, but already there are British and Russian sectors defined. An Iron Curtain will drop and a wall be built in the near future.
Scripture says, For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come (Heb 13:14). Berlin was eventually rebuilt, but not so many other great cities such as Ephesus and Carthage. Their once great, colonnaded streets and palatial buildings are merely impressive ruins today. Sic transit gloria mundi (thus passes the glory of the world).
On Ash Wednesday we were reminded that we are dust and unto dust we shall return. Each of us is going to die, and we don’t get to say when or how. On account of Jesus, our death will usher in new life if we are faithful.
Keep us faithful, Lord, unto our certain death and let no worldly thing so impress us that we forget that its time is limited.
Monsignor Pope Ping!
Incredible and reflective way to begin the morning and ponder the current state of our civilization...
Some ruins are invisible: a civilization can be in spiritual ruins without any changes visible to naked eye. So even though a city’s buildings can be rebuilt, the greater task at hand is the rebuilding of people’s souls...
Thanks for sharing.
Here is a video of the destruction of Christ the Savior cathedral in Moscow committed under the anti-religion orders of Stalin:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YFlx55OANg8
Incredible video.
I thought so, too. It appears the voices have been muffleld because the car and jeep motors and brakes could be heard.
It looks bad enough on film and was much, much in real life.
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