The Commandant demanded, "What are you smiling about !?"

I was brought before the deputy camp commandant, a red-faced woman with heavy forearms and large, splendid teeth. "You've been preaching about God to the prisoners. It must stop!" she warned. I said that nothing could stop it. Furious, she raised her fist to strike me. Then stopped, and stared.

"What are you smiling about?" she demanded, her face blotchy with rage.

I said, "If I am smiling, it is because of what I see in your eyes." "And what's that?" "Myself. Anyone who comes close to another person can see themselves in her. I was impulsive, too. I used to rage and strike out, until I learned what it really means to love. That is to be one who can sacrifice self for truth. Since then, my hands do not clench into fists."

Her hand dropped.

"If you look into my eyes, you'll see yourself as God could make you!" She seemed to tum to stone. She said quietly, "Go away."

I have wondered often if Pilate did not look into Jesus' eyes and see the ruler he might have been in the "king of the Jews" whom his own wife represented to him as innocent and just.

Sabina Wurmbrand had a deep, abiding faith. It enabled her to persevere through many difficult years, including working with her pastor husband under the communists, caring for her son and the church while her husband was imprisoned for 14 years and, finally, enduring her own imprisonment.

The Pastor's Wife is Sabina's account of her life from the time the Soviet tanks rolled into Romania until her family escaped Romania for the West. The book portrays a woman who was incredibly strong and utterly dependent on God.

The Sabina documentary, produced more than 10 years after Sabina's death by her son, Michael Wurmbrand, tells the story of her earlier years. It shows how a beautiful young woman became the wife of a fiery war-time pastor. Sabina paints a picture of a woman who deeply loved her family, the underground church and, above all, Jesus Christ.

(from Voice of the Martyrs newsletter, January 2012)

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