Eclipses

“Now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off … but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was.” (Exodus 20:18, 21)

Yesterday was a quiet, warm-for-October Saturday morning, until my wife called to me with an urgency usually reserved for the dog in crisis. It turned out it was nothing nearly so major … just the sun going out for a while.

She had noticed something odd about the light. That happens, apparently, every great once in a while, when the moon dares insinuate itself between the great sun and the little earth. The light so great it seems nothing could block it is strangely, briefly obscured, and the very air around us seems to change. A deep, unnatural stillness … a shifting of shadows … and for a few long moments, the light is gone.

Something like that happened a Saturday earlier, on October 7, in the early morning calm of a southern Israeli community about three miles east of Gaza. Hamas terrorists suddenly burst onto the streets, waking residents to the sound of gunfire and the screams of their dying neighbors.

Itai and Hadar Berdichevsky, both 30, both trained Israeli soldiers, grasped quickly what was coming. They raced to retrieve their 10-month-old twin boys from their beds, stashed them in their bomb shelter, and turned to face the evil crashing through the doors of their home. Between them, they managed to kill seven of the intruders before the guns took them down.

Hours passed, and neighbors – crouching in their own hiding places – began to hear the babies’ cries. Somehow, the terrorists never quite placed where they were coming from. Family and friends didn’t dare cross the deadly yards and streets to help, until night fell, and Hamas moved on. The bodies of Itai and Hadar were found lying by the empty beds of their children, amid the broken milk bottles. But the little boys survived.

What do we do, when the darkness comes? When God seems to step back, and let the arrogant and the evil surge forward to block out the light? What can be the purpose of these “eclipses?”

The postmaster of the little Chinese village of Miaoshou was just becoming aware of a commotion in the street outside when he heard his office door open. He looked up – doing something of a double-take at the sight of his friend, the Christian missionary from a nearby mountain town, standing in front of him … in his underwear. The missionary, John Stam, smiled, handed him a letter, and turned for the door.

Confused, the postmaster called after him: “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know where they’re going,” John said, nodding at the Communist soldiers waiting impatiently for him. “But I’m going to heaven.”

The morning before – December 7, 1934 – had begun with the soldiers banging on the door of the mission station that John, his wife, Betty, and their three-month-daughter, Helen, had moved into a few weeks before. The station was the culmination of a dream and a calling both John and Betty had nurtured since their college days at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.

They’d been married just over a year – two remarkable young people who had, for some time, been making strong impressions on most everyone they met: family members, fellow students and professors, other missionaries and Christians, strangers and lost souls … all seemed to take an instant liking to the joyful, good-humored, deeply committed couple, so clearly in love with each other and with the people of China. All they wanted was to live out their lives, serving God in this quiet place.

And so they did. But their lives, it turned out, would be very short, indeed.

The Communists wanted money – all foreigners must be rich. They wanted to humiliate these Christians. They wanted to set an example that would intimidate these simple, country people and silence the Gospel forever.

It didn’t quite work out that way. The Stams had virtually no money. When the soldiers stripped them of their clothing and forced them to walk most of 20 miles to a nearby town – John with his hands tied, Betty with the baby in her arms – the young couple smiled at the people who stepped aside to watch them go by. Years later, the Chinese still spoke of the man and woman’s poise and composure.

Determined to shatter that calm, the soldiers moved to murder their baby. In that moment, an old man stepped out of the crowd … a prisoner released from the local jail earlier that day to make room for the doomed Americans. He chided the Communists for threatening an innocent baby. They asked if he’d like to trade his life for hers.

“Gladly,” the man said. And did. The soldiers hacked him to pieces, as the Stams and the crowd watched, stunned. But after that, they left the child alone.

That night, the Communists locked the family in an empty house. John scratched out one last letter – the one he would hand to the postmaster the next day. He signed it, “Philippians 1:20: 'May Christ be glorified, whether by life or death.'" Betty, meanwhile, tended to one last task of her own.

Next morning, a Saturday, they walked the two of them up a nearby hill, stopping under a stand of pine. A shopkeeper from the village suddenly spoke up, pleading for the soldiers to spare the couple’s lives. Instead, the Communists made him kneel beside the Stams. People of the town, watching, were astonished. None of them had any idea their neighbor was a Christian.

John asked if he could die for this stranger, and in place of Betty. As he spoke, a Communist officer lunged forward and severed his head from his body. Betty shuddered at the sight, they say, but kept her composure. An instant later, a blow from behind severed her head, too. Her body fell across that of her husband. Another instant, and their last friend lay beside them.

Two days later, a traveling pastor, Lo Ke-chou, came to the village and found the bodies. He persuaded some of the locals to provide him with caskets, and held an impromptu worship service over the Stams’ remains. As they lay the bodies in their coffins, people remarked at the calm on Betty’s face. More than a few described, on John’s face, a smile.

Pastor Lo suddenly remembered that the Stams’ had a baby girl – what had become of her? Someone finally mentioned the house where John and Betty had been imprisoned, that last night. Hurrying there, Lo discovered the child, forgotten by the soldiers, hidden beneath blankets in a back room. If she’d ever cried during her 56 hours alone, no one heard it.

To her blanket was pinned a ten-dollar bill. It bought the last bottle of formula in the area – enough to last the little baby the whole 100-mile journey to the nearest surviving missionary outpost.

Not all eclipses look like that, of course. Some come with a cancer diagnosis. With brutal news of a terrible accident. A request for a divorce. A word of rejection, termination, or loss. For a little while, something seems big enough to block out the sun.

None of those who loved the Stams could ever understand why such a beautiful, gifted, loving couple should be taken so cruelly, and so young. Why a beautiful baby should be deprived of the mother and father who wanted nothing more than to fill her life with the tender love of Christ.

But then, no one ever understands, when the light grows dim, and the world becomes so awfully quiet. We only know our God is good. And, like James, “we count them blessed who endure.”

From China, that winter, John Stam had sent his father a poem he'd written, called, “Afraid?”

Afraid? Of what?

To feel the spirit’s glad release?

To pass from pain to perfect peace?

The strife and strain of life to cease?

Afraid – of that?

Afraid? Of what?

Afraid to see the Savior’s face?

To hear His welcome, and to trace

The glory gleam from wounds of grace?

Afraid – of that?

Afraid? Of what?

A flash – a crash – a pierced heart?

Darkness – light – O heaven’s art!

A wound of His, a counterpart?

Afraid – of that?

Afraid? Of what?

To do by death what life could not –

Baptize with blood a stony plot

‘Til souls shall blossom from the spot?

Afraid – of that?

The poem came in the mail, one December morning. John’s dad was still reading it when he heard the knock at the door. A cable, with bad news from China.