These were the words in “the text for the day” assigned for the state controlled Lutheran churches this Sunday.  Next Sunday another “text” has been programmed and so forth.

 At the coffee session after the service a married couple and a single gentleman sat down at my table, and we discussed the subject of ”the new birth”.  They said, “We never hear about that”, but fortunately they could testify of their own conversion in their youth.

The name of Billy Graham was mentioned.  They remembered him from the 50´ies.  I did too as a big boy.  When people went home after a big meeting of his in Copenhagen, they wondered what the new birth was about.  That was completely new to them.  (The Lutheran Church teaches that you are “regenerated” in your infant baptism)

I told them about Frau Lex at whose hotel in Germany I once spent one night.  She witnessed to me how she  was lacking in her religious life what Billy had preached on in Dortmund where she´d been.  His text was “You must be born again”.  The words went home and she was born again that night.

I once asked a young girl in Romania how  was saved.  She said, “I used to go to church with my parents (the orthodox church), but one day someone told me that I must be born again.  I had never heard that before”.  However, that awakened her lost soul, and she was, indeed, born again.

The new birth is a miracle.  How does it show?  A new passion to make Christ known is suddenly there.  Our churches all over generally don´t have that passionate emphasis.  Of that I was reminded today at the coffee table while outside in the church yard our beautiful flag with its white cross was waving in the wind reminding us how desperately my lost people, church goers or not, need the gospel of the cross for salvation.

June 19, 2011 – jn –