For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus. 1 Timothy 2:5 NIV

 

It was called the Miss Stone Affair—it’s a little-known story in which a baby changed everything.

 

On a freezing night, the 3rd of January 1902, Katerina Silka described the sky as beautiful and bright. But for Mrs. Silka and her fellow missionary, Ellen Stone, things looked dark. The women had been kidnapped four months earlier by guerillas in Turkish-controlled Macedonia. Held for ransom, the women were constantly afraid of being murdered.

The kidnappers didn’t realize that Mrs. Silka was pregnant. When the group reached a rough hut, she went into labor. By 10 pm, she’d delivered a baby girl. When the chief of the kidnappers entered the hut, Miss Stone picked up the baby and put her into the hands of the violent man. But “as he watched the little helpless morsel in his strong arms, a smile passed over his face.”

Mrs. Silka thought: “Is this the same man I saw only a few months ago, so mercilessly stabbing a poor victim to death? Who threatened our lives? Yes, he is the very same. Who wrought this change in him? Nobody but the little wee baby.” From that moment on,” wrote Mrs. Silka, “we were treated more like free people and not as captives.”

A month later the women and baby were ransomed and released. As God did on another wintery night in a little town called Bethlehem, He responded miraculously to the desperate need of people in captivity. Scripture declares, “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5 NIV). That mediator came as a baby. “What a transformation,” Katerina Silka recounted, “and all because of a baby.” [1]

 

[1] Tsilka, Katarina. “Born Among Brigands.” Strumski.Com, 1902, www.strumski.com/books/mdtreti.pdf.