Introduction

Thou art my hiding place and my shield: I hope in thy word. PSALM 119:114

Corrie ten Boom is one of the few people in the Ochorus library who is remembered less for what she wrote than for what happened to her. For most of her life she was a watchmaker in Haarlem, an unmarried woman who lived above the family shop with her father and her elder sister, went to church, ran clubs for girls and mended clocks. She was nearly fifty when the war reached her door. Within four years she had hidden Jews in her own bedroom, been betrayed and arrested, lost her father in prison and her sister in Ravensbrück, and walked out of that camp alone. She spent the rest of her long life telling the world what she had learned there.

What she had learned was not complicated, and she never pretended it was. She said it in a hundred ways, to audiences in more than sixty countries, in accented English, with a handkerchief, a piece of embroidery or a torch in her hand to make the point. God’s love is deeper than the deepest darkness. Forgiveness is possible, not because we can produce it, but because God gives the love He commands. Worry is to be cast on the Lord and left there. The Christian is to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to live as a light in a dark world. And over all of it, Jesus is Victor — the old cry that had hung on a wooden plaque in the ten Boom house on the morning the police came.

The one thread

If there is one thread running through everything she taught, it is this: the God who was present in Ravensbrück is present everywhere. She did not discover Him there. She had known Him, she said, since she was a small child. But the camp tested what she knew, and she came out with the conviction that there is no place so dark, no loss so great and no heart so bitter that God cannot reach into it. Her sister Betsie, dying, had pressed that conviction upon her, and Corrie carried it for the next forty years as a charge from the dead.

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. PSALM 139:8

Every chapter of this book is a variation on that theme. Her teaching on God’s care in small things is that truth applied to ordinary days in a watch shop. Her teaching on thanksgiving is that truth applied to the barracks. Her teaching on forgiveness is that truth applied to the enemy standing in front of you with his hand out. Her teaching on worry is that truth applied to tomorrow. And her hope of Christ’s return is that truth carried to the end of history.

How this book is arranged

A chapter on her life comes first. Then sixteen short chapters set out her teaching. The first group follows her from the watch shop into the war: God’s providence in the small things, the family’s love for the Jewish people, the Bible carried into the camp, thanksgiving in everything, Betsie’s faith that no pit is deeper than God’s love, and the presence of Christ in suffering. The second group gathers her teaching on forgiveness, which was the heart of her public ministry: the confession of hatred, the famous encounter with a former guard, and the humbler, daily work of forgiving friends. The last group follows the themes of her travelling years: worry and trust, the hidden pattern of providence, surrender, the fullness of the Spirit, prayer and the promises of God, obedience, and the return of Christ. A conclusion and a reader’s guide close the book.

Each chapter ends with application points and a prayer. She would have wanted that. She was a practical woman who distrusted religion that stayed in the head, and nearly every talk she gave ended with an invitation to do something — to receive Christ, to confess a sin, to forgive someone, to hand over a burden. Read a chapter at a time. Stop at the application points. Pray the prayer, or better, pray your own.

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. JAMES 1:22

What this book is not

A word must be said plainly about the limits of this companion. Corrie ten Boom’s books remain in copyright, and this volume reproduces none of her words. Where it describes her teaching, it does so in its own language, and it names the book or recorded address in which the reader may find her own telling. Ochorus hosts several of her recorded addresses — How to Forgive, Power in Prayer, The Greatest of These Is Love, The Love of Christ, Total Surrender and Tribulation — and these, together with the Ochorus biography Portraits of Courage – Corrie ten Boom, are the ground on which this summary chiefly stands. The reader who wants her voice should go to her books.

Where to read her with care

This is not a book of hero-worship, and she would have been the first to object if it were. Three cautions should be carried through these pages.

The first concerns her stories. Corrie told her life many times over nearly forty years, and a story told thousands of times does not stay exactly the same. Her first account of the camps was written in 1945, within months of her release. The Hiding Place, the book through which most people know her, was written with John and Elizabeth Sherrill and published in 1971, a quarter of a century later, and some of its best-loved scenes — the fleas in the barracks, her release described as a clerical error, the meeting with the guard in Munich, Betsie’s saying about the pit — do not appear in the earlier book, or appear there in a different form. None of this makes her dishonest. It is what happens to memory, especially the memory of a preacher. But it means that the careful reader should know which telling is which, and this book will say so where it matters. The vivid dialogue of The Hiding Place is the Sherrills’ craft as well as her memory, and should not be treated as a transcript.

The second concerns her sayings. A great many pithy lines circulate online under her name. Some are hers. Some were borrowed by her from others, and she often said so. Some she never said at all. A reader who wants to quote Corrie ten Boom should find the line in one of her books first.

The third concerns her later emphases. In her travelling years she moved in wide circles, and some of her teaching on demons, on spiritual gifts and on the events of the last days will not persuade every reader. She used Scripture as a preacher rather than a scholar, and she cheerfully admitted it. Where she is plainly faithful to the Word — on the love of God, the cross, forgiveness, prayer and trust — receive her gladly. Where she presses beyond what is written, weigh it, and lose nothing by setting it aside.

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:21

She would have agreed. She was not asking anyone to believe in Corrie ten Boom. She was asking them to believe in the God who had kept her.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Before reading further, write down the darkest place your own life has taken you so far. Keep the page. Return to it at the end of this book.

2. Ask yourself honestly whether you believe that God was present there. Tell Him plainly what you believe and what you do not.

3. If you have read The Hiding Place or seen the film, note which scenes you remember most. Hold them lightly as you read what follows.

4. Choose one of the recorded addresses named above and listen to it or read it this week, before going further.

5. Pray for one person you know who is in a dark place now, and ask God to show you whether you are meant to do more than pray.

A PRAYER

Lord God, You were in the watch shop and in the prison, in the barracks and in the long years of travel that followed. I believe You are here too.

As I read of one woman’s witness, do not let me admire her and remain unchanged. Turn my eyes from her courage to Your faithfulness.

Show me the darkness in my own heart that I would rather not bring into Your light, and meet me there.

Teach me to trust You, to forgive as You have forgiven me, and to believe that Jesus is Victor. Amen.