September 8 | Moments Almanac | Collapse

When the Walls Don’t Hold

On September 8, AD 70, the Roman siege of Jerusalem came to its devastating end. On the same date in 1941, Leningrad was cut off from the outside world, beginning a siege that would last nearly 900 days.

Two cities. Two sieges. Nineteen centuries apart.

One story remembers people who fled when warned. The other remembers people who had nowhere to go and endured.

Sometimes faith means go. Sometimes faith means hold on.

And both stories remind us of something we easily forget: our hope is not that the walls will never fall. Our hope is that God will still be there when they do.

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Welcome to Moments Almanac on Scattered Moments for today, September 8th. And on this day we remember two cities, nineteen centuries apart, both surrounded, both starving, both discovering that walls eventually fail. On September 8th, AD 70, the Roman siege of Jerusalem came to its terrible end, and on September 8th, 1941, German forces severed Leningrad's last land connection to the rest of the Soviet Union, beginning one of the longest and deadliest sieges in modern history. Same date. Same grinding arithmetic of hunger and walls. And one question, when the walls come down, is there anywhere left to stand? Titus, son of the Roman Emperor Vespasian, brought four legions against Jerusalem in the spring of AD seventy. Inside conditions became desperate. Jewish factions that had resisted Rome also fought one another. Food disappeared, hunger became its own enemy. Then came the fire. The temple, the center of Jewish worship for generations, burned. Josephus reports that Titus had wanted it preserved, but once the flames took hold, they could not be stopped. The fighting continued until Jerusalem finally fell. But an intriguing Christian tradition adds another chapter to the story. Decades earlier, Jesus had warned his followers that when they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies, they should flee. Writing more than two centuries later, the church historian Eusebius said the Christians in Jerusalem had received a warning to leave the city and settled in Pella beyond the Jordan. The details had been debated ever since, and we cannot construct exactly what happened, but tradition endured. When destruction approached, the Christians left. They walked away from familiar streets, familiar homes, and the city at the center of their religious world. And sometimes faith means knowing when to leave. Now move the calendar forward eighteen hundred and seventy one years. On september eighth, same date, nineteen forty one, the last major land route into Leningrad was cut. This time there would be almost nowhere to go. The siege lasted nine hundred days, bombs felled, fuel disappeared, bread rations shrank. Then came the Russian winter. Hundreds of thousands died, most not from bullets or bombs, but from starvation, disease, and cold. Across frozen Lake Ladoga, the Soviets eventually established what became known as the Road of Life, trucks carrying food into the starving city and evacuating civilians when possible, but countless others simply endured. And perhaps that's where these two September eighth stories really meet. Jerusalem tells of people who, according to the ancient Christian tradition, escaped because they heeded the warning. Leningrad tells of people who could not escape and somehow endured. One story says go, and the other story says hold on. And faith sometimes required knowing which word belongs to your moment. There are seasons when God opens a door and obedience means walking through it. And there are other seasons where there is no door that seems to be open, the winter settles in, and all you can do is remain faithful through it all. Scripture never promises that our walls will always hold. The job can disappear, the diagnosis can come, the relationship can fracture. The plans we carefully constructed can collapse all around us. Our security was never ultimately in the walls, anyway. It was in the God who remains when they don't. Sometimes faith means leaving when God says go. Sometimes faith means staying when there is nowhere else to go. Either way, as believers, our hope has never been on whether walls will fail or not. Our hope is in a God who will still be there, even when they do. And that's scattered moments for September 8th. I hope you'll join me again tomorrow. Until then, take heart. Notice the scattered moments and share the grace.