
Each week, let’s reflect upon Sunday’s teaching through further exploration…
“The Pattern” (Pieces Sermon Series)
World War II began just over 86 years ago, in September of 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. By the spring of 1940, Germany had overtaken the Netherlands as well. It was there, in the town of Haarlem, that a Dutch family of watchmakers (a father and his two adult daughters) committed to living out their faith in Jesus Christ by providing shelter and food for Jews and others who were being hunted down by Hitler and the Nazi party. Using a secret room that became known as “the hiding place,” it’s estimated they helped save more than 800 Jews during a two-year period before being arrested by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps. Do you know about this family?
In Sunday’s first message for the series “Pieces,” Jonathan spoke about Jesus’s pattern of self-denial and daily sacrifice. This family, the ten Boom family, patterned their lives after Jesus, and their self-denial and daily sacrifice didn’t end when they were arrested…
As many of us know from history lessons, concentration camps were Nazi prisons where many were forced into hard physical labor; lived in bug-infested barracks; and were beaten, tortured, and starved. More than one million people died in these camps. The two ten Boom sisters – Betsy and Corrie – managed to stay together through three different concentration camps. While imprisoned, they shared God’s word with the other captives. At their final camp, Ravensbrück, they even held worship services in their barracks. (“Why would the Nazis permit worship services to be held?” you may ask. That is a good question and one with a great story behind it, but I’ll leave that detail for another day.)
Betsy ended up dying in the Ravensbrück camp. The last words she spoke to her sister Corrie were: “You must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still. They will listen to us Corrie, because we have been here.”
Corrie took those words seriously. She spent the rest of her life after the war traveling to more than 60 countries and writing books, telling people about the love of Jesus through written and spoken word. One speaking engagement came just two years after WWII ended. She was in a church in Munich, Germany sharing about God’s forgiveness. At the conclusion of her speech, as people filed out of the room, a man wove through the entreating crowd to make his way to her. Though this man wore a gray overcoat and brown hat, Corrie saw a blue uniform and visored cap marked with a skull and crossbones. Her mind flashed back to being in a vast room with harsh lighting, a pile of clothing and shoes in the center of the floor, she and countless others shamefully walking naked past this very man. He had been a guard at Ravensbrück. She recognized him right away, but he did not recognize her.
He said to Corrie, “You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk. I was a guard in there. But since that time, I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein, will you forgive me?” He extended his hand toward her.
If we try to put ourselves in Corrie’s shoes, maybe we can imagine the internal wrestling she must have felt in this moment. She was a child of God, saved and cleansed by the blood Jesus willingly poured out for the forgiveness of her sins. Yet here stood a man who had contributed to the death of her family! How was she to answer him?
That’s when Jesus’s words about forgiveness flooded her mind; we find them in Matthew 6:15:
But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Corrie prayed, “Jesus, help me. I can lift my hand, I can do that much. You supply the feeling” She shared that as she reached out her hand, something incredible happened: “The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.” Grasping the man’s hand, she exclaimed, “I forgive you, brother! With all my heart!”
Corrie’s forgiveness wasn’t begrudging. It wasn’t mumbled as just words that were expected for the situation. Her forgiveness flowed from being deeply rooted in Jesus and following the pattern He’d set through His own life.
Can you imagine if all of us as Christ-followers actually patterned our lives after the One we call Savior and Lord? To what could that kind of countercultural life of self-denial and daily sacrifice lead?
To view sources for the information about Corrie ten Boom and learn more about her faith, visit corrietenboom.com and https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/boom.html.