A Child Shall Lead Them

About the Book

On the second day of the patrol Lucius and four of his men made their way up one of the roads on the hillside just a large cypress tree suddenly crashed down on top of a house fifty yards in front of them. They heard a woman scream. “Come with me!” Lucius yelled. He charged up the hill, his men following behind him. When Lucius got there a woman staggered out of the badly damaged house screaming hysterically with her three-year-old daughter in her arms. She put down her daughter on the ground and turned around to go back into the house. Lucius grabbed her arm. “Stop, you can’t go back in there! Can’t you see that the wall is about to collapse?” She tried to break loose, shrieking in terror. “Let me go! My husband and baby are still in there!” The huge tree rolled over several feet causing the house to groan from the weight. Lucius realized it indicated the wall was giving way. Lucius looked at one of his men. “Marcus, hold onto her while I go in!” Months of self-hatred and listlessness that had enslaved Lucius were suddenly gone. Marcus held her tight as he objected in an anxious voice, “You can’t go in there, Sergeant! That wall is about to give way any minute.” Lucius, ignoring the warning, pushed some debris out of the way so he could go in. Another soldier attempted to restrain him, but Lucius jerked his arm away. “I’ll not stand here and let a baby die without trying to save it!” he snapped angrily. Lucius squeezed through the small opening as the wall creaked under the weight of the tree. Once inside the house he saw the father pinned beneath a heavy piece of interior wall that had collapsed. The father was conscious, but couldn’t free his legs. Lucius glanced quickly around the room looking for something to use as a lever. He noticed a crushed table, and heard the sound of the baby crying in another room. He broke off one of the table’s legs to use as a fulcrum in order to pry up the wall. Lucius, straining to lift the wall so the father could crawl out, lifted it a few inches. “Try to move now,” he said with a groan. The father slid one leg out, moaning in pain. “I can’t get my other leg out.” Lucius took a deep breath and used every ounce of strength he had to lift the wall a bit higher. The father twisted his leg, and gasped, “I’m free.” A handful of neighbors, who had heard the sound of the tree falling and subsequent screams of the mother, rushed to the scene to help. By the time they got there Lucius was already in the house. Seeing the mother and three-year-old, but not the father or baby, they realized they must be trapped in the house. “Let’s get them out of there,” one cried moving toward the house. “Don’t move anything!” Marcus shouted. “Our sergeant is already in the house trying to rescue the father and baby.” They couldn’t believe their ears. A Roman soldier was actually risking his life to save some Jews. Inside the house, Lucius said to the father, “The fact that your baby is still crying means that he’s still alive.” Lucius and the father worked together with as much care as they could to clear a tiny passageway without making more debris fall. The father looked through a small opening into the room where the baby was trapped, but couldn’t see him. Small chunks of the roof started to fall onto them like raindrops as the wall continued to moan. It was an ominous sound. “We better work faster,” Lucius said. After a few minutes they made a small opening into the baby’s room. The father was too big to fit through the tiny gap, but Lucius managed to squeeze through. When he was halfway through he saw the baby. “I can see the baby!” he yelled excitedly. Lucius crawled the rest of the way through, picked up the baby and shouted to the father, “I’ll hand him out to you through the hole. You better get him out of here fast!” The father grabbed his baby, and limped out of the house on his injured leg as fast as he could. The witnesses cheered but suddenly stopped when the tree shifted

About the Author

G. D. Ballein was born on May 16, 1941, in Monongahela, Pennsylvania. He earned a B. A. degree at Judson College, a M. A. at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Illinois, and a D. Min. at Golden Gate Theological Seminary in Marin, California. After serving as an American Baptist pastor for thirty-eight years, he retired in 2003. He and his wife, Lorna, have three children and four grandchildren.