“You can never learn that Christ is all you need, until Christ is all you have.”
Dutch saint, Corrie Ten Boom, learned that lesson just down the road from here in the Barteljorisstraat, the main shopping road in Haarlem, from where I am sending this blog.
Many of you will be familiar with her story from The Hiding Place, originally a book by John and Elizabeth Sherrill published in 1971 and subsequently made into a film with the same name.
To all intents and purposes the Ten Booms were an unremarkable family. Two unmarried daughters, Betsie and Corrie, living with their elderly father above their watch sales and repair shop.
Devout and very religious, they would begin each day with prayers and a Bible devotion, opened to any and all, including their employees. Except, of course, on the Sabbath: they were staunch members of their local Dutch Reformed church.
Betsie was born with poor health and as you did in those days she decided to stay unmarried in order to provide a home for her father. Corrie herself was the first woman in Holland to be licensed as a watchmaker. An early romance came to nothing and so she stayed with her family, developing a ministry with children with disabilities.
And that’s it. Their uneventful days, as regulated as their own watches, revolved around their abiding love for one another and their concern for those less fortunate. Nothing to write home about, you would say.
It all changed on Friday, 10 May 1940, when the Germans invaded the Netherlands – and their lives were totally upended. Corrie was 48 years; Betsie 54.
You may know the story. Using her job as a watchmaker in her father's shop as a cover, Corrie built contacts with resistance workers, who assisted her in procuring ration books. Then in 1942 the Resistance built a hiding place in their family home for Jews, members of the Resistance and young men evading the Nazi work draft.
The family were betrayed in February, 1944. Corrie and Betsie were dispatched to a political concentration camp in the Netherlands, and finally following the debacle at Arnhem to the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. There, of all places, they encountered the faithfulness of God.
Only Corrie survived the war. Her father Casper ten Boom soon became sick in prison and died in a hospital corridor only ten days after the arrest. Betsie perished in Ravensbrück where she showed huge spiritual resilience. You may know the remarkable story of the bottle of vitamin drops which, when shared, never ran dry.
So Corrie embarked on a significant international ministry, dying in 1983 in California. One of her major themes is the need for forgiveness, to forgive as God has forgiven us. Even forgiving her concentration camp guards. “Forgiveness is an act of the will,” she taught, “and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.”
Over the years I have often thought about the Ten Boom family, Betsie and Corrie with their elderly father. Who would have thought? And yet God used these unremarkable people in such a remarkable way. It’s his MO.
As the apostle Paul commented: “If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us.
“As it is – he concluded - there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at.” (2 Corinthians 4:7 The Message)
Even so we are all prey to be taken in by appearances, by what the world considers important.
Corrie tells of an incident in which she asked a pastor who was visiting their home to help shield a Jewish mother with her new-born infant. You would like to think that his answer would be obvious.
In fact, he replied, "No definitely not. We could lose our lives for that Jewish child."
In contrast her father appeared: “Give the child to me, Corrie,' he said. Father held the baby close, his white beard brushing its cheek, looking into the little face with eyes as blue and innocent as the baby's. You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honour that could come to my family'"
Presumably this visiting pastor would have known his Bible and the conclusion of Jesus’ final parable: “Then those ‘goats’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?’
“He will answer them, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.’” (Matthew 25:44f)
Over the years I’ve often thought about that story – with me being the visiting pastor. What would I have done, especially with a family of my own?” I dread to think. And yet, as Corrie urges us: “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”
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