When passing through overwhelming trials, God’s people are sometimes tempted to think that He has forgotten them or no longer cares about them. They cry out to Him for help, only to receive silence from Heaven and no relief from their excruciating difficulties.
As a punishment for sheltering Jews from the Nazis in Holland during World War 2, Corrie and Betsie ten Boom (of The Hiding Place fame) were incarcerated in three separate prisons over a period of ten months. Their final place of detainment was Ravensbruck, the notorious German extermination camp for women. Of more than 130,000 prisoners sent to Ravensbruck, only 40,000 survived.
Conditions in the concentration camp were nightmarish. Barracks were terribly overcrowded and had woefully inadequate toilet facilities. Prisoners lacked adequate food and clothing. Sickness and disease were rampant. Every day prisoners heard and saw instances of horrific cruelty, senseless suffering, and death.
There were times at Ravensbruck when Corrie experienced great despair and felt abandoned by God. But Betsie and the Lord Himself repeatedly reminded Corrie through various means of God’s ongoing watchcare over her.
One of those occasions was a cold early morning when Corrie and Betsie were walking to the daily 4:30 a.m. roll call outside their barracks. Seeing the beautiful stars, Corrie prayed aloud disconsolately: “Lord, You guide all those stars. You have not forgotten them, but You have forgotten Betsie and me.”
“No, He has not forgotten us,” Betsie spoke up. “I know that from the Bible. The Lord Jesus said, ‘I am with you always, until the end of the world’ [Matthew 28:20], and Corrie, He is here with us. We must believe that. It is not what we are feeling that counts, but what we believe!”
Years later Corrie wrote: “I slowly learned not to trust in myself or my faith or my feelings, but to trust in Him. Feelings come and go—they are deceitful. In all that hell around us, the promises from the Bible kept us sane.”
On another morning, Corrie awoke with a bad cold. Back in her hometown, with a hankie to use for blowing her nose, she would have easily tolerated the infirmity. But in the concentration camp, without so much as a hankie, she felt she could not bear her cold and runny nose.
“Well, why don’t you pray for a hankie?” suggested Betsie.
Corrie wanted to laugh. There they were imprisoned in a camp where thousands of people each week were being put through unimaginable suffering and many were dying. “And Betsie suggests I pray for a hankie!” she thought. “If I were to pray for anything, it would be for something big, not something little like that.”
Betsie, however, immediately and simply prayed, “Father, in the name of Jesus I now pray for a hankie for Corrie, because she has a bad cold.”
Corrie shook her head and walked away. A short while later she was standing by the window of her barracks when she heard someone call her name. Looking out, she spotted a friend and fellow prisoner who worked in the camp’s infirmary approaching her.
“Here you are,” the woman said to Corrie in a matter-of-fact tone as she extended a small package to her. “Take it. I bring you a little present.”
Corrie could hardly believe her eyes when she opened the small parcel—it contained a handkerchief! “How did you know?” she queried. “Did Betsie tell you? Did you know I had a cold?”
The woman shrugged, then revealed: “I know nothing. I was busy sewing handkerchiefs out of an old piece of sheet, and there was a voice in my heart saying, ‘Take a hankie to Corrie ten Boom.’ So, there is your gift, from God.”
Later Corrie commented: “That pocket handkerchief, made from an old piece of sheet, was a message from Heaven for me. It told me that there is a heavenly Father who hears, even if one of His children on this little planet prays for a tiny little thing like a hankie. Not only does He hear, but He speaks to another of His children and says, ‘Bring a hankie to Corrie ten Boom’.”
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These and many other instructive incidents from the life experiences of Corrie ten Boom and several other outstanding servants of Christ Jesus are included in my book Timeless Stories: God’s Incredible Work in the Lives of Inspiring Christians (Christian Focus Publications, 2010). There’s plenty of inspiration and instruction to gain on a variety of Christian living themes (Family, Service, Faith, Prayer, Adversity, etc.) from the examples of Corrie, Amy Carmichael, William and Catherine Booth, Billy and Ruth Graham, Dwight Moody, George Muller, Charles and Susanna Spurgeon, Hudson Taylor, John Wesley, and George Whitefield.
Copyright 2024 by Vance E. Christie
