When I was in Washington a couple of weeks ago, I was there for a specific reason, outside of sightseeing. However, I had one afternoon free, and decided to go see one memorial that I had not seen before: The US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

I’ve always been interested in the events surrounding WWII. The rise of Hitler has always fascinated me in a completely disturbing way, and looking through the exhibit only deepened my conviction that, if we aren’t a careful, watchful people, history has a way of repeating itself.

Something I’ve found in my own reading over the years, has been the incredibly touching stories of people who endured the camps and survived. In the face of such horror, all the things that serve to divide people in everyday life fall away, leaving them stripped down to their most basic human selves.

I’d like you to take a few minutes and watch this video.

Beautiful, isn’t it?

There were stories like this in the memorial, too, where, in the face of despicable, unexplainable torment, people lived outside themselves and offered all they had for someone else.

It made me wonder what our world would be like if this is the way everyone lived all the time. What if we realized that simple gestures of kindness could literally be the difference between life and death to someone else?

Maybe we would come to realize that it shouldn’t only be in the light of catastrophic events that we strip away all that divides us. Maybe it’s in the uniting that we find what makes us human.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. ~ Ephesians 4:32 ESV