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Refugees from Hong Kong brought harrowing tales from Hong Kong about the rape and looting of that city. I was disturbed, one evening in the oppressive quiet of my room when I selected a book on the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s and read the writer's description of a scene on the road to Burgos: - "Each new group of refugees we passed on the road told ever increasing gorier and more wildly exaggerated tales of rapine and destruction than the previous group." There was food for comfort here: - "wildly exaggerated." How we seek straws to clutch. It reminds me of an incident on a German commerce raider on which I was prisoner in World War I. During an action in which the raider was engaged a prisoner lost his nerve and hid behind the mast in the 'tween decks. One wit, in the lull of firing yelled, "Paddy, you're hiding on the wrong side of the mast." No one knew from which side the opposing craft was attacking. In our need, our desperation, we cling to anything that will offer reassurance, hope, and another chance. How often have we read of someone being saved from death or accident say as a last resort: -"I prayed to God." It should not be the last, but the first. My ever-recurring thought was that perhaps God had chosen our family for death. Better families, more actively Christ following than ours had been put to the sword. Why should we expect an easier way out? Are we not taught, "Thy will be done?" There was the doubt, never of His ability to save, but that His plan for us was to join Him along the way of death to Life. Few of us have the grace to forgive the figure that lights the fagot pile. To be a Stephen is not easy. All my prayers begged for courage and fortitude to die, if necessary, without breaking. Again, there was the recurrent question that I might not have perceived God's will for us. Job's advisors and admonitors gave my mind little comfort. However, now, I know that the captivity was all part of His plan for us. Had I remained in Hong Kong I should have been captured or killed there. Had I been captured there none
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