Appendix A: Lessons from the Life of Corrie ten Boom

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee; because he trusteth in thee.”

— Isaiah 26:3, ASV

The lessons below gather the themes of this book so that readers can return to them. They are not a method. Corrie ten Boom would have been the first to say that her life was not a pattern to copy, but a witness to the faithfulness of God. Each lesson rests on Scripture, not on her example alone.

1. Faithfulness Is Built in Small Things

The courage of 1943 was built by a century of small faithfulness: a weekly prayer for Jerusalem, a trade kept honestly, and a crowded table with room for one more. “He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much” (Luke 16:10, ASV).

2. Pray for What God Loves

By family tradition, the ten Booms had prayed for the Jewish people for generations before anyone needed hiding. When the time came, they did not need to be persuaded that the Jews were their concern. “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: They shall prosper that love thee” (Psalm 122:6, ASV).

3. Disappointment Can Be Redirected

Corrie’s lost hope of marriage became, by her father’s counsel, love given another way to go, to many more people than one household could hold. “God setteth the solitary in families” (Psalm 68:6, ASV).

4. Serve the Least

Long before the war, Corrie gave her time to disabled people whom others overlooked. She defended their worth before a Gestapo officer. “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me” (Matthew 25:40, ASV).

5. You May Have Come for Such a Time as This

An old watchmaker and his daughters had no power, but they had a place, a house, and a network of trust. God did not need them, and yet he placed them there. “Who knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14, ASV).

6. Open the Next Door

The rescue work began with one frightened person at the door, and then another. God rarely shows the whole road at once. “Deliver them that are carried away unto death” (Proverbs 24:11, ASV).

7. Fear God More Than Pharaoh

The midwives in Egypt refused to kill the children, and God dealt well with them. Christians may disagree about hard questions of truth-telling under tyranny. But no one is obliged to help carry out injustice. “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29, ASV).

8. Prepare Wisely, Live Joyfully

The Beje drilled with a stopwatch and also held concerts, classes, and cream-puff suppers. Practical preparation and joyful trust belong together. “Thou art my hiding-place; thou wilt preserve me from trouble; Thou wilt compass me about with songs of deliverance” (Psalm 32:7, ASV).

9. God Is Present in Solitude

In solitary confinement Corrie found a closeness to God she had never known. “When my father and my mother forsake me, Then Jehovah will take me up” (Psalm 27:10, ASV).

10. Every Soul Matters

Before a Gestapo officer who called her work with disabled people a waste of time, Corrie insisted that God’s love reaches the weak and despised. Her statement recorded that she would help anyone in need, of any race or creed, in obedience to Christ.

11. We See the Underside of the Embroidery

On the night of the executions at Vught, Corrie learned that we see only the tangled back of God’s work. One day we will see the pattern. “For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12, ASV).

12. Don’t Carry the Whole World’s Grief

At Vught Corrie learned that she was not asked to bear the sorrows of the whole world, only to bring them to God. “Casting all your anxiety upon him, because he careth for you” (1 Peter 5:7, ASV).

13. Give Thanks in Everything

Betsie gave thanks in Barracks 28. Whatever exactly she said about the fleas, her life was an exercise in thanksgiving. “In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus to you-ward” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, ASV).

14. Give First, Even Out of Poverty

In a camp where survival seemed to require selfishness, Corrie gave her vitamins to thirty strangers a day. “The jar of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail” (1 Kings 17:16, ASV).

15. Beware the Ravensbrück That Destroys

Corrie saw selfishness as a subtler danger than cruelty. Need can teach us to pray, and it can also make us selfish. “not looking each of you to his own things, but each of you also to the things of others” (Philippians 2:4, ASV).

16. God Is There Even in the Pit

Betsie died believing that no darkness is deeper than God’s love. “If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there” (Psalm 139:8, ASV).

17. Escape Is God’s Gift, However It Came

Whether Corrie’s release was a clerical error or an ordinary discharge, she knew she had been brought out of the snare. “Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers” (Psalm 124:7, ASV).

18. Forgive Before You Feel It

Corrie wrote to the informer within months of Betsie’s death. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the feelings follow. “Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you” (Matthew 5:44, ASV).

19. Overcome Evil with Good

She opened a home in Germany, preached to former guards, and took in those her neighbours rejected. “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21, ASV).

20. The Love Is Given

In Munich she could not forgive, and asked God for his love, and it came. “The love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit which was given unto us” (Romans 5:5, ASV).

21. Tell What You Have Seen

For thirty years she told the same story in sixty countries, in season and out. “Preach the word; be urgent in season, out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2, ASV).

22. God Carries Us to the End

In her silent last years she was carried, as she had been at birth. “Even to old age I am he, and even to hoar hairs will I carry you” (Isaiah 46:4, ASV).

23. Become a Hiding Place for Others

Those who have found their hiding place in God can shelter others from the storm. “A man shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest” (Isaiah 32:2, ASV).