In 1940, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. Among those affected were the members of the ten Boom family, who ran a church for people with mental disabilities, raised foster children in their home, and did other charitable work. With the invasion, the Nazis insisted that much of their work cease. That was when the ten Booms began a secret effort that would ultimately cost most of them their lives. They began sheltering Jews and resistance fighters in a hiding place they constructed in their home. Friends and neighbors, who had known of and benefited from their prior charitable work, assisted by providing the ten Booms with additional ration cards and other supplies for those they sheltered.
Eventually, however, an informer notified the Nazis of the ten Booms’ work, and in 1944 the entire ten Boom family was arrested. Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie were sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany, a horrific, flea-ridden, death-dealing place. Both girls were afraid, but Betsie came to Corrie one day with an idea. She said she had found something in her bible that might help them. She quoted a passage to Corrie from the Letter to the Philippians that said, “In all things, give thanks.” Corrie quickly replied that she could not give thanks for the fleas. Betsie reminded her that she could give thanks that the two of them were together, as most families had been split apart. Corrie said she could give thanks for that, but not the fleas. Then Betsie noted that somehow the guards had not checked her luggage, and therefore her bible had not been confiscated. Corrie agreed she could be thankful for that, but not for the fleas. She could not, she said, under any circumstance, give thanks for the pestilential fleas.
But eventually Corrie learned that the only reason she and her sister had not been assaulted by the guards was because their captors were so repulsed by the fleas that they would not enter the girls’ barracks. And so, years later, writing about her experience, Corrie ten Boom reflected that this is how she was taught to give thanks for all things – because you just never know.
As Rev. Gil Bowen once said, so often our resentments and bitterness about our lives’ problems are based on our assumption that life would be better without the obstacles, hurdles, troubles and deprivations that fall our way. But, can we be so sure? Sometimes, in retrospect, we may find that the challenges and difficulties we have struggled through and grown from had a redeeming side, and we can actually give thanks for them.
It’s fascinating that Corrie and her sister, Betsie, were discussing the words of the Letter to the Philippians in their Nazi prison, for the letter had been written by a fellow prisoner almost 2000 years earlier. The Apostle Paul wrote his admonition to give thanks at all times and for all things while he was himself imprisoned by Roman authorities. Apparently joy, peace, hope, trust and gratitude shaped Paul’s mood in that Roman cell, because he, like the ten Boom sisters, had learned that though we are not shielded from hardship in this world, nevertheless, the love and goodness of God can be counted upon at all times, and in surprising ways.
Are you facing anything trying or painful? Are you worried or angry or hurt? Well, strange as it may seem, perhaps this is precisely the right time to give thanks – because, you just never know.
