The Hand Held Out

“and hope putteth not to shame; because the love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit which was given unto us.” — Romans 5:5 (ASV)

This is the most famous story Corrie ever told, so it's worth saying first what kind of evidence it is. It is her own account, and there is no other. The man is never named, and no one else who was there has come forward. It first appeared in print in 1971, more than twenty years after the event, and her 1953 book doesn't mention it. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. It means it reaches us as a memory shaped by many retellings.

As she told it, the year was 1947 and the place a church in Munich, where she had just spoken about God's forgiveness. A man came forward whom she recognised as one of the guards at Ravensbrück, from the place where new prisoners had been processed and humiliated. He didn't recognise her. He said he had since become a Christian and believed God had forgiven him, but he wanted to hear it from one of the women who had suffered there. He held out his hand.

She couldn't take it. She, who had been preaching forgiveness all over Europe, felt nothing but the memory of Betsie in that place. So she prayed silently, telling Jesus she could not forgive this man and asking him to give what she didn't have. Then, as an act of obedience, not feeling, she put out her hand. As their hands met, she said, a warmth of love flowed through her that she knew was not her own, and she could tell him from her heart that she forgave him.

That fits everything else we know. She had written in the camp that she couldn't hate, because she saw her Saviour behind the cruelty. She had written to the informer before she could have felt much at all. And she was honest that forgiveness wasn't a single victory. She said she found Christian friends who wronged her in small ways much harder to forgive than the guard, and that the bitterness kept coming back, so she had to forgive again. Jesus said “Until seventy times seven,” and she found out why.

From 1946 on, she travelled almost without stopping for more than thirty years, speaking in more than sixty countries, including behind the Iron Curtain. Her message was simple: Jesus is the conqueror, God's love is stronger than the deepest darkness, and forgiveness is possible because God gives it. Her motto all her life was the words on the plaque in the Beje: “Jesus is Victor.” In 1971 The Hiding Place made her world-famous, and a film followed. In 1967 Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, honoured her as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, and a tree was planted for her in Jerusalem on 28 February 1968, exactly twenty-four years after the raid. A family that had prayed for Jerusalem for generations was honoured there.

In 1977 she settled in California. On 23 August 1978 a stroke took away most of her speech. For her last five years the woman who had spoken in more than sixty countries could say almost nothing. It echoed her mother's last years, and like her mother she went on loving people through the little she could still do. She died at home on 15 April 1983, her ninety-first birthday.

Her story has two hiding places. The first was the space behind a brick wall, and it saved lives, but it couldn't save everyone. The second was the one she found when the wall could no longer protect her: “Thou art my hiding-place and my shield: I hope in thy word.”

Whom do you find impossible to forgive? Corrie's answer would be simple. Tell God the truth, that you can't. Ask him for his love. And hold out your hand before the feelings arrive.

One thing to do this week: pray this, honestly, about the person you find hardest to forgive: “Jesus, I can't forgive them on my own. Give me your love for them.” Then take one small step of obedience toward them, a greeting, a kind word, or simply refusing to talk badly about them.