Oradour-sur-Glane, July 9

Yesterday, July 9, we drove the 2 hours north to Oradour-sur-Glane, a town that ceased to exist on June 20, 1944. Nazi soldiers passing through, in retaliation for the killing of an officer or just to terrorize the population before the Allies really gained control (D-day was the 6th, just 4 days before), rounded up every person in town that day, killed them all--6 escaped--and then burnt the town. Since then, the town has not been touched besides gathering up objects that belonged to people and clean-up, of course. As you enter then town, you are greeted by this sign.
This is the church where they gassed and machine-gunned over 400 women and children. There are bullet marks in the alter and the walls. In the exhibit before the town, I read the comment of a man who helped clean up the town and he talked about the way he found the people in the church. I will not describe that here, only say this, that he saw a pram--stroller--with its victim still in it. I tell you this only because that pram, or one from the town, still sits in the church, rusted and collapsed on the floor. It was very personal to see that. As I looked at that and held Abigail's hand, tears came to my eyes. Thankfully, I could just put on my sunglasses and walk out into the glare of the afternoon sun. The women and children who died here were not so fortunate. A quote in the exhibit said something like this: The men (meaning the soldiers) committed the ultimate offense against their mothers and all women--they did not spare the children.
This is pretty much what the town looks like now--everything just as it was in 1944. The men were rounded up in the city gathering grounds and then executed.

For scripture study when we we got home, I shared these scriptures speaking of the time when Christ will come again to the earth, from Revelations 21: 3-4 with my children:
"And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."
I am so grateful for the eternal perspective the gospel of Jesus Christ gives me: life did not begin at birth, we chose to come here and to face the good and the bad. Life does not end at death, there is an eternity of happiness awaiting us. There is a balancing, a reconciling, a reckoning, a restitution for the pain we experience, and all this is made possible because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, who understands our sorrows and pains. "Surely he has born our griefs and carried our sorrows..." I believe those words of the Prophet Isaiah. I take great comfort in them. I hope I will always use my God-given agency to stand up for what I know to be right, even when it goes against what everyone else is doing.