{"id":2536,"date":"2023-04-17T07:59:43","date_gmt":"2023-04-17T11:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2536"},"modified":"2023-04-17T07:59:43","modified_gmt":"2023-04-17T11:59:43","slug":"telling-your-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/17\/telling-your-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Telling Your Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>.
\u00a0
Sometimes hope is born in the darkest places.
\u00a0
During the totalitarian regime of Josef Stalin, it was illegal to speak even a word against the government of the Soviet Union.
\u00a0
Political dissidents, artists, and \u201cundesirables\u201d were routinely seized and sent away to the gulags, which were forced-labor camps.\u00a0
\u00a0
More than a million never returned.
\u00a0
One of them was a doctor named Boris Kornfeld.\u00a0
\u00a0
Sentenced to years of \u201cre-education\u201d in the brutal gulag system, Kornfeld kept to himself.\u00a0 He watched his back.\u00a0 He took no risks.
\u00a0
Then something happened that he never expected:\u00a0 He began to trust in God.\u00a0
\u00a0
His heart was flooded with hope.\u00a0
\u00a0
He didn\u2019t tell anyone why, but he began to serve others.\u00a0 He even used his surgical skills to save the life of one of the hated guards.\u00a0 That act of compassion, he knew, would bring trouble.\u00a0 But when one of the vilest prisoners threatened him with death for helping the enemy, he realized he was no longer afraid.\u00a0
\u00a0
Later that day he performed life-saving stomach surgery on a young man with a sad face.\u00a0
\u00a0
He stayed up all night, sitting beside his patient, who was hovering between life and death.\u00a0
\u00a0
Suddenly he felt led to break his silence.\u00a0 He talked for hours to the young man about the joy of meeting this God of mercy and grace.\u00a0 He described how God\u2019s love had driven the fear from his heart, and how he had even felt buoyed by meaning in the midst of the gulag\u2019s misery.
\u00a0
The young patient, gripping the doctor\u2019s hand, listened intently as he drifted in and out of consciousness.
\u00a0
Sometime around dawn, Boris Kornfeld was murdered by the prisoner who had threatened him.\u00a0
\u00a0
He had shared his spiritual convictions just once.
\u00a0
But his audience of one, the sad-faced prisoner, lived on.\u00a0 His name was Alexander Solzhenitsyn.\u00a0
\u00a0
Seized by the words he had heard from his doctor, Solzhenitsyn ultimately abandoned his loyalty to Marxism.\u00a0 Kornfeld\u2019s faith became his own.
\u00a0
Anchored by his trust in God, he won the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature and became one of the most heralded voices for freedom in the 20th<\/sup> century.
\u00a0
It\u2019s tempting to think that telling your own story, or speaking a word of encouragement when you have the opportunity, can\u2019t possibly make a dent in this messed-up, broken world.
\u00a0
Don\u2019t you believe it.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here.\u00a0Sometimes hope is born in the darkest places.\u00a0During the totalitarian regime of Josef Stalin, it was illegal to speak even a word against the government of the Soviet Union.\u00a0Political dissidents, artists, and \u201cundesirables\u201d were routinely seized and sent away to the gulags, which were forced-labor camps.\u00a0\u00a0More than a million never returned.\u00a0One of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2537,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[499],"class_list":["post-2536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-evangelism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2538,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2536\/revisions\/2538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}