Praise the Lord. It is Friday and Sunday is coming. Praise the Lord for the way He places before us an open door to worship Him, witness for Him, and serve Him. May the Holy Spirit provoke us to magnify and glorify His Name in word and deed.
One of the persons who dearly loved the Lord and glorified Him in and through her words and deeds is Corrrie Ten Boom. Corrie is one of the saints of Jesus. William Barkley defines a saint as the one who makes it easier for others to believe in Jesus Christ. Corrie Ten Boom certainly did that. She was born in 1892 into a loving, Christian family in the Netherlands. Corrie was living with her older sister and her father in Haarlem when Holland surrendered to the Nazis. As World War II came to the Netherlands, she was 48, unmarried, and worked as a watchmaker in the shop that her grandfather had started in 1837. Her family was deeply committed to the Lord and participated in the Dutch Reformed Church. Her father was a kind man who was friends with half of the residents of the city of Haarlem. Her mother had been known for her kindness to others before her death from a stroke.
Corrie’s family was involved with her church’s effort to give temporary shelter to her Jewish neighbors who were being driven out of their homes. She found places for them to stay in the Dutch countryside. Soon the word spread, and more and more people came to her home for shelter. As quickly as she would find places for them, more would arrive. She had a false wall constructed in her bedroom that led into a hiding place for the Jewish people who were being hunted by the Nazis.
On February 28, 1944, a man came into their shop and asked Corrie to help him. He said that he and his wife had been hiding Jews and that she had been arrested. He needed six hundred gilders to bribe a policeman for her freedom. Corrie promised to help. She found out later that he was a quisling, an informant that had worked with the Nazis from the first day of the occupation. He turned Corrie’s family in to the Gestapo. Later that day, her home was raided, and Corrie and her family were arrested.
Corrie’s father died of an illness within 10 days of being arrested, but Corrie and her older sister Betsie remained in a series of prisons and concentration camps, first in Holland and later in Germany. Although for many people, the concentration camp would have been the end of their work, for Corrie and Betsie the months they spent in Ravensbruck became "their finest hour." The truth of the matter is that Corrie’s finest hour was filled with constant battles with fear of the unknown.
When Corrie Ten Boom and her sister Betsy first arrived at the German concentration camp, they were ordered to strip naked and pass before the watching eyes of German soldiers. These godly women, raised in a devout Christian home where purity and chastity were virtues, were horrified at the experience. Not only were they enduring incredible humiliation, they also did not know whether they would be allowed to live or be executed. The terror of the unknown was before them and they feared for their lives because they knew they were considered the enemy.
How did they keep from coming undone in their experience? They were, in fact, able to keep “the peace that surpasses all understanding” as they stood before the guards. Corrie tells the story of how her sister, Betsy, turned to her and said that they were going to rejoice in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. Time and time again, through all kinds of humiliating and degrading experiences, watching countless people killed, with the smell of death all around them, they rejoiced through their fear. They rejoiced because there was Someone in whom they could rejoice. Their fear and doubt were conquered by a deep faith that enabled them to rejoice – no matter what their circumstances or their future.
Because of the strength they drew from keeping their eyes on Christ, who had suffered so willingly for them, Corrie and Betsie were able to keep their eyes off themselves so that they could minister hope and faith to those around them. Corrie described a typical evening in which they would use their smuggled Bible to hold worship services:
"At first Betsie and I called these meetings with great timidity. But as night after night went by and no guard ever came near us, we grew bolder. So many now wanted to join us that we held a second service after evening roll call. These were services like no others, these times in Barracks 28. A single meeting night might include a recital of the Magnificat in Latin by a group of Roman Catholics, a whispered hymn by some Lutherans, and a chant by Easter Orthodox women. With each moment the crowd around us would swell, packing the nearby platforms, hanging over the edges, until the high structures groaned and swayed. At last either Betsie or I would open the Bible. Because only the Hollanders could understand the Dutch text we would translate aloud in German. And then we would hear the life-giving words passed back along the aisles in French, Polish, Russian, Czech, and back into Dutch. They were little previews of heaven, these evenings beneath the light bulb." (Ten Boom 1971, p. 201)
Corrie and Betsie faithfully ministered to their imprisoned and desperate congregation that was housed in the shadow of the crematorium. They overcame their fear for their own lives by keeping their eyes on the One who had suffered on Calvary’s cross, willingly, for them. In response to their stance of faith, Jesus empowered them by His Spirit, touching countless lives that would eventually make their way to death’s door. Corrie wrote,
"If God had not used my sister Betsie and me to bring them to Him, they would never have heard of Him. Many died, or were killed, but many died with the name of Jesus on their lips. They were well worth all our suffering. Faith is like a radar which sees through the fog—the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see."
Betsie, whose health was weak throughout her time in the concentration camp, grew steadily weaker and died on December 16, 1944, just 12 days before Corrie was released from Ravensbruck. Some of her last words to Corrie were, "...we must tell them what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been here." (Ten Boom, 1971, p. 217)
On December 28, 1944, after ten months of living in concentration camps, Corrie Ten Boom was free. She had lost her father and beloved sister to the horrors of Nazi death camps. For the rest of her life Corrie Ten Boom would tell the story of God’s deep love, His faithfulness in all situations, to countless millions around the world.
When we stand staring at our fears, there is no better place to gaze than upon the presence of Almighty God. This is where we can gain the peace and power that is needed to faithfully stand even though the winds of turbulence beat against our soul and the waves of fear wash over our hearts. We must gaze into His faithfulness, look into His eyes of mercy, and think constantly about His power and Sovereign grace that empowers us to faithfully stand regardless of what may come.
Corrie Ten Boom once said, “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away your ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”
Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.” (Isaiah 12:2 NIV)
In Christ,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPPSG_SpojY
Saturday evening worship service.
Location: First United Methodist Church. Endicott
53 McKinley Avenue, Endicott.
Sponsored by the Union Center United Methodist Church, 128, Maple Drive, Endicott
Saturday February 19, 2011
6PM Coffee Fellowship
6:30 PM Worship Service
Worship Music: Worship Band from Hawleyton UMC
Speaker: Rev. Bill Puckey
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