“Come
back to me.” These were the words He spoke to me as I awoke on the cool
morning of July 7th, 2007 in Nashville TN. I had prepared for this day
through a 40-day Daniel fast, I had written about it four years earlier
through a dream, having known nothing about “The Call” festival.
The day was amazing. I danced, prayed, sang
and worshiped for ten hours in the shadow of a small traveling cloud. The atmosphere was filled with sincere repentance as over
70,000 enthusiastic Christians focused thier hearts on God, His
marvelous creation and His plan of salvation.
Though I must have jumped
in praise for hours, I did not grow weary; the
Daniel fast gave me great
endurance,
just as it had given Daniel and his follower’s great strength, greater
than the priests of Nebachenezzer who had eaten meat sacrificed to
idols. As we sang and worshipped,
the unity of our praises harmonized, flowing out of the Titan stadium to
the streets below, drowning the neighborhood and the nation in tidal
waves of Christ-centered joy.
"The Call" was
also where I found the book, “Ten Commandments Twice Removed,” by Danny
Shelton. Mr. Shelton is the founder of the “Three Angels Broadcasting
Network,” and a Seventh Day Adventist. Finding and reading his book led
me to the SDA church, a church that truly enriched my life. If
you'd like to read about one of our joyful Sabbath experiences together,
please click here.
And what of today, November 11th, 2011? Today
I’ve been thinking much more seriously about my vocation. This deeper
consideration is the result of reading Anne Frank’s diary. A
diary written in 'The Secret Annex,' where the sounds of air raids and
exploding bombs often seared the midnight air, sending shock waves
through thin walls and tenuous dreams.
Today I read the entry Anne made on 11/11/43:
Ode to My Fountain
Pen
In Memoriam
My fountain pen was always one of my most
prized possessions; I valued it highly, especially because it had a
thick nib, and I can only write neatly with thick nibs. It has led a
long and interesting fountain-pen life, which I will summarize below.
When I was nine, my fountain pen (packed in
cotton) arrived as "a sample of no commercial value" all the way from
Aachen, where my grandmother (the kindly donor) used to live. I lay in
bed with the flu, while the February winds howled around the apartment
house. This splendid fountain pen came in a red leather case, and I
showed it to my girlfriends the first chance I got. Me, Anne Frank, the
proud owner of a fountain pen.
When I was 10, I was allowed to take the pen to school, and to my
surprise, the teacher even let me write with it. When I was eleven,
however, my treasure had to be tucked away again, because my sixth-grade
teacher allowed us to use only school pens and inkpots. When I was
twelve, I started at the Jewish Lyceum and my fountain pen was given a
new case in honor of the occasion. Not only did it have room for a
pencil, it also had a zipper, which was much more impressive. When I was
thirteen, the fountain pen went with me to the Annex, and together we’ve
raced through countless diaries and compositions. I’d turned fourteen
and my fountain pen was enjoying the last year of its life with me when…
It was just after five on Friday afternoon. I came out of my room and
was about to sit down at the table to write when I was roughly pushed to
one side to make room for Margot and Father, who wanted to practice
their Latin. The fountain pen remained unused on the table, while its
owner, sighing, was forced to make do with a tiny corner of the table,
where she began rubbing beans. That’s how we remove mold from the beans
and restore them to their original state. At a quarter to six I swept
the floor, dumped the dirt into a newspaper, along with the rotten
beans, and tossed it into the stove. A giant flame shot up, and I
thought it was wonderful that the stove, which had been gasping its last
breath, had made such a miraculous recovery.
All was quiet again. The Latin students had left, and I sat down at the
table to pick up where I’d left off. But no matter where I looked, my
fountain pen was nowhere in sight. I took another look. Margot looked,
Mother looked, Father looked, Dussel looked. But it had vanished.
“Maybe it fell in the stove, along with the beans!” Margot suggested.
“No, it couldn’t have!” I replied.
But that evening, when my fountain pen still hadn’t turned up, we all
assumed it had been burned, especially because celluloid is highly
flammable. Our darkest fears were confirmed the next day when Father
went to empty the stove and discovered the clip used to fasten it to a
pocket, among the ashes. Not a trace of the gold nib was left. “It must
have melted into stone,” Father conjectured.
I’m left with one consolation, small though it
may be: my fountain pen was cremated, just as I would like to be
someday!
Yours, Anne”
