At Esther Press, we empower and equip women to courageously stand strong in the truth of who God made them to be. Let us do that for you today by sharing the story of Corrie ten Boom.
“God’s love still stands when all else has fallen.” —Corrie ten Boom
Have you ever seen a tapestry? On the back, it just looks like a chaos of unconnected and disorganized strings. But on the front, you find a beautiful woven image.
This was one of Corrie ten Boom’s favorite illustrations of the way God works. From the human perspective, life often looks like the back of a tapestry—haphazard and confusing. But from God’s perspective, the true beauty is seen. And she knew this truth from experience.
“Thou art my hiding place and my shield.”
Corrie ten Boom was born on April 15, 1892, in the Netherlands. She was the youngest of four children born to Casper and Cornelia ten Boom. Their family shared a deep faith in God and His Word. Not a morning passed when the family didn’t gather for Scripture reading and prayer.
As a young woman, the man she loved married someone else. Her father encouraged Corrie to give God her broken heart and ask Him to help her love this man and his new bride with His love.
After this, Corrie resigned herself to a spinster’s life. But that life was much fuller than she ever could have imagined. In her mother’s words, “Happiness isn’t something that depends on our surroundings, Corrie. It’s something we make inside ourselves.” Corrie worked with girls and the mentally impaired. After her mother and aunts passed away, she, her father, and her sister Betsie housed children of missionaries who were on the mission field. But they’re most known for their work with the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation of Holland.
“How should a Christian act when evil was in power?”
Initially, her main focus was on helping Jewish neighbors find safety. But over time, the family began sheltering the very people who the Nazis hated most. A resistance worker installed a secret room in Corrie’s bedroom at the top of the house with a buzzer that would signal the refugees to run to the secret room as quickly as possible. They had seventy seconds to make it to safety.
On February 28, 1944, the raid came. Yet all six of their friends made it into the secret room and managed to survive.
Eventually, the family was arrested, and Corrie and Betsie were sent to Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp. They miraculously smuggled a Bible into their barracks, which the guards refused to enter due to a lice infestation. And in that place of darkness, they shared the light of Jesus with the women in their quarters. Betsie saw her health rapidly deteriorate in Ravensbrück where, sadly, she died.
Just a few days later Corrie was released and sent to an overcrowded hospital wing. Even there, she ministered to the women. Later she learned that she was released because of a clerical error—one week later the women her age had been led to the gas chambers.
“The reality of God’s love was just as sure as the cruelty of men.”
After her release, Corrie helped establish a home for people to heal from the war. There she taught in order to be whole again, survivors must forgive—a lesson she learned herself. Corrie traveled extensively sharing her experiences and the love of Jesus. And in her travels, she had the chance to forgive two of the people who had directly inflicted her and Betsie’s suffering. She knew that she couldn’t forgive in her own strength, but claiming Romans 5:5, she asked God to grant her the strength. And in the choice to forgive, God’s Spirit warmed her heart and she responded in love.
Corrie ten Boom died on her ninety-first birthday. She had experienced the deepest pits earth could hold, and through God’s power she lived to tell the story, sometimes going into the world’s most dangerous regions to do so. And even to this day, the story of her courage lives on and shows what God can do with a life submitted to Him.
“Obedience is easy when you know you are being guided by a God who never makes mistakes.”—Corrie ten Boom
What does God ask us to do? Who does God ask us to forgive? How can we bring glory to our Father by forgiving those who have harmed us? Corrie ten Boom knew she couldn’t forgive her persecutors on her own, but she trusted God to give her the strength and love to obey His command.
Prayer: Lord, help me to forgive when I just want to hold on to my bitterness. Thank You for Your forgiveness, and for the example of people like Corrie ten Boom who show us that it’s possible to forgive in the power of Your name. Amen.
