The Berlin Wall- 20 years later

Twenty years ago  marked a significant spiritual geography in my life. Riding in a public bus at the smallest European city capital, Torshavn in the Faroe Islands, I became a prayer.

It was rather an ordinary day, I was day-dreaming in the bus while music plays on the radio. Suddenly, I was awakened from my day dream I heard the news broadcast  announcing the fall of the Berlin Wall. I cried and the public bus I was in, it seemed to me,  turned into a cathedral with a somber and solemn atmosphere. I didn’t make it to East Berlin, I was living in Austria in 1988 and our missionary community  regularly  prayed for Eastern Europe. We also “harbored” a few Polish and Czech refugees who has joined our community. I left Manila to be close to Eastern Europe and be a missionary to the Slavic people. I didn’t transform the nation, I didn’t have a crusade or teaching ministry. A few years later, I visited Berlin with a small group of American, a Dane and a Faroese youth. We did  our own little memorial and prayer service at the City Hall, Brundenberg gate and on a neighborhood were the wall once stood.  The Cathedral in Berlin was another place we pay homage and pilgrimaged. The Cathedral has since been rebuilt leaving the portion of what left from the bombing and adding a prophetic and post-modernistic architecture to remind us of the horrors of wars, dictators, tyrants, and now welcomes the peace makers and intercessors. We felt at home and at peace with the prayers offered at the church.  Our small group of seven are awe-struck and drawn into silence trying to make sense of history.

My spiritual geography today reminds me that I am intercessor, praying and standing in the gap for the people to experience freedom from tyrants and authoritarian rule that diminished people to less than what our Creator made us to be.

It is a sentimental day trip I just did. I am reminding myself to look around for more “Berlin Wall” erected around me and once again embrace the life of an intercessor.