And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
(Matthew 16.18 NRSV)
Phillip Yancey gives a moving account of the film REPENTANCE by Tengiz Abuladze. The movie deals with the persecution of churches in the old Soviet Union. It details false denunciations, forced imprisonment, the burning of churches--the very acts that earned the KGB its reputation for cruelty, especially against religion. In Stalin's era, an estimated 42,000 priests lost their lives. Ninety-eight of every 100 Orthodox churches were shattered. REPENTANCE portrays these atrocities from the vantage point of one provincial town.

"In the film's most poignant scene, women of the village rummage through the mud of a lumberyard inspecting a shipment of logs that has just floated down the river. They are searching for messages from their prisoner husbands who cut these logs in a labor camp. One woman finds initials carved into the bark and, weeping, caresses the log tenderly; it is a thread of connection to a husband she cannot caress. The movie ends with a peasant woman asking directions to a church. Told that she is on the wrong street, she replied, 'What good is a street that doesn't lead to a church?'"

We know now that for many people in the Soviet Union the church was a rock during those terrible days. The church was there and the church cared. Communism has come and gone, but the church continues.

Dear God, may I always be a part of the church that is there to help those in need. Amen.

Ron Newhouse

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