Near the Charles Bridge

Last evening standing at the edge of the Charles Bridge Max pointed to a wall with scratches on it, some of them deep, and asked us to imagine how they got there. Somewhere deep within me I felt a terrible fear, a fear so overwhelming I didn't want to near it. I could hear within me desperate, blood curdling, primal screams that had once happened there. It was much easier to focus instead on the Lorraine cross above the river and make my wish for the future, that God's peace would rest here.

This afternoon I sat by the edge of Uvoz Street, catching my breath before journeying further up the hill. A car drove by on the ancient cobblestones, but instead of a car I heard the strong forceful sound of horses hooves, lots of them, as though they were part of an army. I felt the same fear I had experienced the evening before beside the Charles Bridge.

Simultaneously church bells began to toll, ringing out from the top of that hill that good trumps evil, that hope can be born in the most dire of curcumstances, that in all the dark and scary places of our lives, God can and will enter if we will allow it.

In the middle of that raw fear I felt the presence of God powerfully in this place. singing the joyful news that truth, beauty, goodness and love and all other noble virtues can never be conqueroed. Though they may be hidden for a time, grace will always rise again.

In some ways I regret knowing so little of Prague and what happened here. But what I can know is that people in this place have sufered immense cruelites. They have been brutalized and ravaged who knows how many times. But God is and has been within this city. The spires of churches everywhere point to heaven, and the creativity on every building, drainage grate and door points to the refusal of these people to live without hope. In the beauty and loveliness of this place the grace of God that has been here for centuries lives on and flows even today like the great river in its center.