Have you heard the story of Irena Sendler from World War II?

When Hitler took over Irena’s beloved Poland, he set up ghetto camps where Jewish families lived before being crammed into cattle cars and hauled off to concentration camps where most died.

But Irena Sendler’s heart was touched by the plight of the Jewish people, especially their young children. She knocked on Jewish doors in the Warsaw ghetto and, in Sendler's own words, "tried to talk the mothers out of their children."   Irena offered an escape from near certain death, offering to take the little ones to Roman Catholic convents, orphanages and homes where they would be given non-Jewish aliases.  Imagine the parents’ agony.

The children that were released to Irena’s care now had to be carefully removed from the guarded Ghettos.  Some were stolen out in boxes, suitcases, sacks and coffins.  Babies were sedated to quiet their cries, some of them transported in the bottom of a tool box. Irena carefully wrote down the real names of every child taken—in hopes of reuniting them with family members after the war. The names were placed in jars that she buried in a garden.

Ultimately, Irena was caught and tortured by the Nazis who broke both her feet and legs. In the end, though, she saved nearly 3000 Polish Jews.

What is lesser known is that Irena’s father was a physician many years before World War II, at a time when the deadly disease, typhus, was a major problem in Poland.    Fearful of catching the sickness, many doctors refused to treat patients in a region which happened to have a large number of Jews living there. Not Irena’s father.  He faithfully, courageously treated everyone…and died from Typhus in1917.

In profound thanks, Jewish community leaders approached Irena’s mother with financial assistance for Irena’s education.  It was a gesture that Irena never forgot…and a kindness she returned, trip after dangerous trip into the Jewish Ghetto.

Proverbs 24:11 “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.”

That’s Irena’s story.  What’s yours?

Do you and I worship “niceness?

I say...quite possibly.

As Americans, we prefer nice churches in nice neighborhoods with nice seats in nice auditoriums.

Gone the days of squawky P.A. Systems, our churches rumble with the latest and greatest in audio gear.  The sound is...pretty nice.  The job of doing PowerPoint and creating video clips is now the domain of a “Pastor of Visual Arts.”   The stuff on the screen, frankly, looks pretty nice. 

Nothing wrong with any of that.  But niceness—as a frame of reference—can go too far.  It comes to a crash up against an old hymn that’s fallen on hard times:

Man of sorrows, what a name.

For the Son of God who came.

Ruined sinners to reclaim.

Hallelujah!  What a Savior.

Wow!  We love Jesus the nice teacher.  We love Jesus the nice healer, Jesus the nice good-deed-doer. But that name, “Man of sorrows”--lacks any of the niceness we crave.

The language is so blunt, even stark.  “Ruined sinners.”  Not the least bit nice.

We want so badly to believe better of ourselves.

So we labor under false notions of a humanity that somehow has a shred of something worth redeeming.  Something nice. But we don't.  Apart from Christ, there is not so much as a single atom within us that is nice.

Quite the contrary assures Isaiah 64:6: “All our righteousness is like filthy rags!”

Which makes the rest of the song so remarkable:

Guilty, vile and helpless, we

Spotless Lamb of God was He.

Full atonement—can it be?

Hallelujah, What a Savior!

The grand gospel story, of course, is more than the ugliness of sin.  Much more.

But it is far too epic to stoop to mere niceness. 

Where’s all the music?

When I fill in as host for Moody Radio’s morning show, we do a feature called “Breakfast for the Soul.”  Essentially, it’s a brief devotional that I try to follow up with a song that fits the reading.    But I’m often stumped. Example?

Where is the chorus that reminds us fasting is the expected behavior of a normal Christian life?  Ever heard a song about the persecuted church?  Or loving people living a homosexual lifestyle?  Good luck finding that kind of stuff.

So I’ve taken the liberty of crafting an opening verse or chorus on some real life subjects that probably should be addressed in a song.  Like this one about sharing Christ with my neighbors:

Now that winter's come and gone

I'm more concerned about my lawn

Than the lost folks living right across the street.

I spend hours picking weeds

When I should be planting seeds:

Acts of kindness, prayers and times to meet and greet.

Now let’s be honest.  Most of us struggle at some point when we give our tithes or gifts on Sunday.   But nobody has yet to write a song about that.  Here’s a suggested opening:

Lord, in my heart, I know that tithing's good.

But I'd keep it all for me if I thought I could.

So overcome my greed

With the sense of a greater need.

Teach me what it means to really give.

Honestly, we need a song that speaks transparently of our struggle with fasting.  Example?

We’re not so big on fasting.

We much prefer to eat.

Deny ourselves and skip a meal—

To pray?  That’s such a feat!

And for those of us who are addicted to anxiety…how ‘bout a prayerful chorus like this:

Forgive me for my worry—it's the sin that just won't quit.

Sometimes it feels like praying doesn't help the slightest bit.

I've memorized the verses and I try to meditate.

But worry has been winning the upper hand of late.

So how ‘bout it song writers out there?

Isn’t it time our choruses got more honest?  More real?

I think so.

Psalms 9:11   Sing praises to the LORD, who dwells in Zion; Declare among the peoples His deeds.

Crawling across the plywood of our attic, I spied the tan plastic bag and knew exactly what was inside: Daytimers.

Before there was Google Calendar and Evernote...

Before there were Palm Pilots...

Back when Windows referred to the glass in your living room—not an operating system—we needed a way to keep track of our schedules.

Many of us in the business world used Daytimers—a spiral bound pocket book with calendars and appointment pages.  And in that tan plastic bag up in my attic were several years’ worth of old Daytimers.

You know what caught my eye as I flipped through those planners—more than a quarter of a century old?  It wasn't the business stuff, the appointments and meetings and billing issues.  It was the personal stuff—things that define a family.  Example?  I  found notated on one page where our baby girl, Lynnette, learned to say, “See you later” when talking on the phone.

In another planner, I found a note affirming our little girl performed both major bodily functions in her toddler toilet.  And as any parent can tell you, that's definitely a milestone worth recording.

As I flipped through more pages, I saw notes marking a movie my wife and I went to see...the date we went to a Cubs game...the list of guests invited to a surprise birthday party for her.

I frankly cannot point to a single business item that caught my eye or tugged at my heart.      Yet...the kid stuff...the me-and-my-wife stuff.....that mattered a whole lot.

All that meticulous tracking of billable hours that seemed so important at the time...just wasn't very important at all.

Life, I was reminded in that attic moment, is made up of daily, ordinary, routine things that are anything but insignificant viewed through the lens of time.

Strange how a coating of dust creates so much clarity.

I should have known the pleasant looking cowboy before me was an imposter.  But his gloves, hat and gun all looked legit.  He invited us to a sandpit where we could pan for gold (okay, it was actually pyrite—but it looked like the real deal).

I have to confess, it was exhilarating swirling the shallow pan, exposing the yellow glow of gold—just like I'd seen in the movies.  We carefully dumped our gold into miniature cloth sacks, pausing now and then to see what kind of fortunes we'd amassed.

I saw “we” because it was me, two young nieces of mine, along with our five year old granddaughter.   Wasn't long before we'd each collected some gold.  And that's when the cowboy kicked into action. 

He thrust a sack bulging at the seams right at our faces. “Tell ya what,” he drawled slyly.  “I'll trade any of you your puny little sack of gold for mine, here.  What do you say?”  Niece number one said no.  Granddaughter Joslynn said no.  But Niece number two quickly grabbed the bag out of his hands, gleefully trading her own. She was sure she'd gotten the bargain of a lifetime until she unlaced the string and discovered it was packed with nothing but sand.

I was immediately drawn to the scene in Eden where the serpent offers Eve an impossibly good exchange...which proved too good to be true. But it was too late.  She had already traded away her gold for a kind of sand.

The truth is, we ride a dangerous trail, you and I.  And despite pleasant appearances, we have an enemy determined to take our gold—and never give it back.  It could be the gold of your joy in Jesus.  Don't give it up.  It could be the gold of your sexual purity.  Don't give it up.  It could the gold of your contentedness at work.  Don't give it up. 

 Proverbs 4:23 says it another way:  “Guard  your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”

My young niece got her bag of fake gold back, thanks to the cowboy.  But the enemy you meet out on the trail knows no such kindness.

Hang on to your gold, pardner!