We went to see the movie One Life as soon as it came out. While it lived up to my expectations for being emotionally exhausting, I didn’t go to see it for the thrill. I knew the outcome; I just didn’t know the “how”: how did he pull it off? I wanted to see what it had to say about living a life of integrity when the world is crumbling all around.
World War II, especially the Nazi part of it, remains a fountainhead of movie and book inspiration 80 years on. Apparently, the darkest hours of human history have much to teach us that cannot be learned otherwise.
If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I’ll give you enough info without spoiling the plot for you. A true story based on the life of Sir Nicholas Winton, the movie toggles between the collapse of Czechoslovakia in the face of Hitler’s takeover and what is revealed fifty years later. “Nicky”, as Sir Winton was known as a young man, sets about rescuing children, mostly Jewish, facing certain death – only to spend years after the war living with the sense of failure.
Life can be cruel, very cruel, and the loss of innocent life, especially that of children, and en masse is too much to bear for all but the most hardened of hearts. Estimates are that 1.5 million children, mostly Jewish, died at the hands of the Nazis. It is a stat that freezes my brain.
To rescue a comparative handful of innocents doesn’t seem like much. So it felt to Sir Winton, especially when he thought of who he could have rescued had he had enough time and resources.
As I watched the movie, I wasn’t thinking of takeaways – that’s not the way to watch a movie the first time around. But this is a movie that is hard to shake off when you walk out of the theater. It stays with you, like a hearty meal. Definitely feeds you, but don’t try any handsprings for a while. Bits and pieces, scenes and dialogs keep playing out as your mind works to sort it all out.
That said, if you are interested in my takeaways, here are four:
- Do what you can do
Years ago, a guy by the name of Dick Foth spoke a message with one of those tag lines that sticks with you forever. He was talking about how when the task gets overwhelming, you just “do what you can do,” emphasis on the word can. Maybe there is a lot you could do if this or if that. Maybe there are options just beyond your reach. Or other solutions that are way out there. In the end, you simply do what you are able to do.
That was Nicky. Long before he was knighted by the Queen of England, he knew he had to do something and even that little something seemed impossible. But he had the guts, maybe even the naïveté, to press ahead. What he wound up doing didn’t look like anything he’d ever done before. But as he stepped up, he used what skills he already had, honed in very different settings.
By can, I don’t mean that you know in advance that your efforts will actually work. Usually you don’t. You just look at the resources you have, however measly they may seem.
Sometimes they don’t work. Doing what you can do also means making attempts that might fail. You keep using what is in your arsenal until you discover what does.
When we served in China, we were trying things that had never been done before, things that didn’t always make sense at the time. One day I met with a university official I knew. I didn’t tell him I was struggling with next steps. Unaware of my concern, he whispered an idea I might consider undertaking. It had never been done before, wasn’t necessarily in his or his own school’s best interest, I’d never imagined it, and it seemed a huge leap for me.
But he told me I had one ace in my pocket that could help pull it off. We went for it – and it paid off in huge dividends. There was a lot I couldn’t do, but he showed me what I could.
- Bite off more than you can chew
For years I kept an illustration I’d cut out of some paper. The artist had drawn a man rowing a boat with a huge ship bearing down on him. The caption was, “Bite off more than you can chew.”
Back in college, we non-frat guys lived in a dorm next to the Pike frat house. The brothers aimed for a Guiness record for longest ping pong marathon. Two players played continuously with 5-minute breaks every hour. Nonstop volley was not necessary, but those same players had to keep the ball in play night and day.
Several years later the memory of that event inspired me to engage our Chi Alpha campus ministry at Baylor University in doing the same thing. By then, we had to make it to 110 hours to set a new world record.
When one of the two guys slated to play backed out, I stepped in. After all, it had been my idea, so I was responsible. But I only managed to go for 40 hours. John Smith, the other player, went on to break the record for a single player against various competitors at 120 hours. The money we raised in that crazy stunt went to Calcutta’s Mission of Mercy.
I don’t remember the last few hours I was at that table. All I know is that when I woke up, the doctor in the infirmary said all I lacked was sleep and common sense. What I woke to was the sense that I had blown it. But what mattered was that John had done it, the record broken, and the money raised.
What Nicky attempted to do was beyond conceivable. Getting Jewish kids on trains in Eastern Europe, through Nazi Germany, and safely to England was mind boggling. Doing so while Hitler’s forces were closing in? Well, watch the movie and see what biting off more than you can chew looked like in one guy’s life.
- Take it one step at a time
It’s one of my favorite expressions in Mandarin Chinese: Yi bu yi bu. The literal translation in English is “one step one step” – or, as we say, “one step at a time.”
When our kids were little and we were living in China, Kim made up a song for them to sing as we took hikes, short walks really. As the little ones started lagging, we’d sing “Yi bu yi bu”. It was usually enough to keep them going until we reached our destination.
It’s all a matter of putting one foot in front of the other. Literally taking it one step at a time, one day at a time. One step, one step.
I think of Nicky and what he and his team faced. Daunting doesn’t even begin to describe it. Their plan unfolding as they went, they frequently had to pivot into unknown territory. The threat of death was ever present. Yet they kept taking it step by careful step.
- Never give up
Back in the late 70s, I was doing campus ministry in Texas. That’s where the ping pong marathon happened. My mentor and predecessor in ministry leadership was Darrell Logue. Later he and his wife were killed in an automobile accident, leaving two little kids in the care of his brother.
The last time I heard Darrell speak was at his final campus ministry retreat. He drew on Winston Churchill’s famous speech, “Never give in!” But what I remember Darrell saying is, “Never give up.”
Churchill had returned to his old school, Harrow, in the heat of World War II (1941). He told the students, “You cannot tell from appearances how things will go.” Regardless, he said, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never…” But, he added, there is one exception. Give in only to “convictions of honour and good sense.”1
Such was the case with Darrell. He’d pioneered campus ministry in a skeptical environment. He’d been told pursuing such ministry would hurt his career. The students at the retreat did not know that part of his story. But I did and when he told them to never give up, I understood what that really meant to him.
As Churchill told the Harrow students several months after the worst of the Blitz, it had looked like “we were finished.” But even then, the effort to push back the Nazis was far from over, victory far from certain. It would be another year and a half before D-Day, another two and a half before Germany would surrender.
Whatever it was that propelled Nicky, he did what he had to do against all odds. There were no guarantees of success. There was no certainty that he himself would survive. But he knew what he had to do – and he kept at it.
***
For so many people on earth, including those in my own country, the world appears to be crumbling all around. How does one live a life of integrity in such a chaotic world? How does one continue to do good?
In December 1938, Nicky was headed for a skiing holiday in Switzerland when he responded to a friend’s appeal for help in Prague. Why did he do it?
As he was knighted in 2002 for services to humanity, his answer to that question was that something simply had to be done. He was challenged to get involved with the most basic of statements: “Look, if anything can be done, perhaps you’d like to try and do it.”2 It was enough for him to act.
Most – maybe all – of those kids Nicky rescued from Czechoslovakia would have surely died had they not escaped when they did. Like a raging fire blasting through a forest, Axis forces were destroying everything in their path.
Mere days after Nicky’s mission was abruptly cut short and the last of his “kids” made it safely to London, German planes began bombing London itself. London’s own children had been spirited away to relative safety in the countryside. Nicky’s “kids” replaced them in these now childless London homes. The London Blitz killed 30,000 people, destroying 70,000 buildings and damaging 1.7 million others. As traumatizing as that must have been for the kids rescued by Nicky, it was nothing compared with what those who remained in Czechoslovakia went through.
Nicky’s mission was over. He could rescue no more children. Originally registered as a conscientious objector, he eventually served in the Royal Air Force. Following the war, he helped refugees and used his prior banking experience to assist with reconstruction and development on the continent. Meanwhile, his work of rescuing children in Eastern Europe remained hidden for half a century.
There are places on our globe – Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, Sudan, and Haiti come to mind – where worlds are falling apart and where children are dying. But they are also places where modern-day Nickys do what they can do, bite off more than they can chew, take it one step at a time, and never give up. We may never know their names or the names of the children they rescue.
Even in places much less enflamed – places all over our world – Nickys are at work, rescuing kids in danger. Their work lacks the drama to make it to the big screen. But like Nicky, they work – not for the fame, but for the kids.
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