A Tramp for the Lord

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. ISAIAH 6:8

Corrie ten Boom came out of Ravensbrück at the end of 1944 with no father, no sister, a ruined business and a charge. Betsie had told her that when they were free they must go and tell the world what they had learned. For more than thirty years afterwards, from her fifties into her eighties, she did exactly that. She had almost no money, no organisation behind her and for most of those years no settled home. She called herself a tramp for the Lord, and the phrase became the title of one of her books. This chapter is about the obedience that sent her, and what it teaches those of us who will never travel as she did.

Obedience without a plan

She did not set out with a strategy. In 1946 she crossed the Atlantic for the first time and spent months in the United States and Canada, speaking wherever she was invited — churches, colleges, prisons, homes — and moving from one invitation to the next. That journey fulfilled one of the plans the sisters had made in their bunk in Barracks 28. From there the travels widened until she had spoken in more than sixty countries, including many behind the Iron Curtain.

By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. HEBREWS 11:8

What sent her was not ambition but obedience. She did not think of herself as gifted. Her English was accented, her stories simple, her repetitions many. In Power in Prayer she asks her hearers to pray that they would forget the channel and see only the Lord, and that she herself would be hidden behind the cross. That was the spirit of the whole enterprise.

The gospel first

It would be easy to assume that her message was chiefly about the war. It was not. She told her story, but the story was always a vehicle for the gospel. Almost every recorded address on Ochorus ends with an invitation to receive Christ. She had a horror of people who assumed they were Christians because they went to church or had believing parents. In The Greatest of These Is Love and Power in Prayer she uses two old sayings to make the point: that a mouse born in a biscuit tin is not thereby a biscuit, and that God has no grandchildren. Every person must be born again for himself.

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. JOHN 3:3

In the same addresses she tells of a young man in her underground group who told her that saving lives was the most important work in the world. She told him there was something more important still, and that was saving souls. He smiled and said that was his pastor’s business. Months later he was arrested and sentenced to death, and, as she tells it, he wrote to the group before he was shot to say that he had told the men in his cell about Christ, and now understood that winning souls for eternity was the greatest work of all. She passed on his message to young people wherever she went: do not wait for the last week of your life.

And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. DANIEL 12:3

To the enemy’s country

Her obedience took her to the places she might most have wished to avoid. Within a few years of her release she was running a home for refugees and displaced people in Darmstadt, in Germany. In her book Amazing Love, published in 1953, she tells of going into an internment camp to preach to former women guards from the concentration camps, whom she had feared and despised. Readers who want the story should read it there.

How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? ROMANS 10:14

Later she carried the gospel into Communist Europe. In The Greatest of These Is Love she tells, with obvious delight, of discovering the hidden microphone in a hotel room behind the Iron Curtain, and deciding that God had given her a congregation of Communist officials. Every day after that she preached into it.

A woman preaching

Honesty requires a note. In the strict Reformed circles of her own country, some objected on principle to a woman preaching, and Christians still differ on that question. Corrie did not argue the point at length. She went where she was invited and spoke of Christ. Even those who disagreed with her tended to speak of her with respect. Readers will weigh the matter by their own convictions, but none should doubt the obedience that drove her.

Your own sending

Most readers of this book will never travel to sixty countries, and should not try. The lesson of her life is not that every Christian should become a travelling speaker. It is that every Christian is sent somewhere. She told audiences that every believer is called to be the light of the world, not only the pastor. The place may be a kitchen, an office, a school or a hospital ward. The call is the same.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. MATTHEW 28:19–20

And the obedience is the same. She began as a watchmaker who opened her door. The travels came later. Faithfulness in the first place is the only preparation for any other.

But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy. ACTS 20:24

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask God plainly where you are sent — not in the future, but this week. Write down the names of three people there.

2. Consider whether you are relying on church attendance or family faith instead of a personal new birth. Settle it before God today.

3. Think of the place or people you would least like to be sent to. Pray for them.

4. Tell one person this week, simply and without pressure, what Christ means to you.

5. Pray that when you speak of God, others would see Him and not you.

A PRAYER

Lord, You sent a grieving woman out of a prison camp into all the world. Here am I; send me where You will.

Hide me behind the cross, so that those I speak to see You and not me.

Give me a burden for souls, and courage to speak of Christ in my own kitchen and office and street.

Make me faithful where I am, and ready to go wherever You call. Amen.