Conclusion

I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. PSALM 16:8

We have covered a good deal of ground in sixteen short chapters, and it would be easy to come away thinking that Corrie ten Boom taught many things. In truth she taught one thing, from many angles, for nearly forty years. God is present, and His love is deeper than the deepest darkness. Everything else is that truth applied. Providence in small things is that truth applied to the watch shop. Thanksgiving in everything is that truth applied to the barracks. Forgiveness is that truth applied to the enemy with his hand out, and to the friend whose letters we keep in a drawer. The casting of care is that truth applied to tomorrow. The fullness of the Spirit is that truth applied to the inside of a believer. And the return of Christ is that truth carried to the end of the world.

A witness, not a theologian

She never claimed to be a theologian, and it would be unfair to judge her as one. She used Scripture as a preacher uses it, sometimes loosely; her stories changed shape over years of retelling; and some of her later emphases will not persuade every reader. We have tried to be honest about all of that.

But none of it touches the heart of her witness. The core of her story — the hiding place, the raid, the prisons, the deaths, the release and the forty years of travel — is confirmed by independent records. And the core of her teaching is confirmed by something older: by the Scriptures she carried into the camp and read aloud in the dark.

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

What to do with it

If you have read this far, the danger is that you will admire her and change nothing. She would have hated that. So here is the plainest counsel this book can offer. Go back to the chapter that made you uncomfortable. Not the one you enjoyed — the one you would rather not read again. That is probably where God is working. Take its application points and do them, slowly, one at a time.

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

For many readers that chapter will be one of the three on forgiveness. There is almost certainly a hand you have not taken, a letter you have not written, a record of wrongs you have not burned. Corrie’s whole life says that you do not need to feel forgiving first. You need to decide, and ask God for His love, and obey. The feeling will follow, in His time.

Two things to carry

Carry away, first, the train ticket. Much of what frightens us is the future, and we try to find today the strength for trials that have not come. God does not give it, because we do not yet need it. When the day comes, He will. She had tested it at roll call in Ravensbrück.

Carry away, second, Betsie’s charge. The comfort God gives in the pit is never only for the one who receives it. If He has brought you through something, He has made you able to tell someone else that His love was deeper. That is what Corrie did with the rest of her life. It is what she would want you to do with yours.

Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. 2 CORINTHIANS 1:4

A last word about the woman

She would not want to be remembered as a heroine. She played down her courage all her life, and she was honest about her fears, her resentments and her failures. She said that she had never graduated in the science of not worrying, and that she found some small injuries harder to forgive than great ones. The real woman who emerges from her own recorded words is more encouraging than any legend: often afraid, sometimes petty by her own admission, and always dependent on God.

That is exactly why her witness can be trusted. She did not survive because she was strong. She survived, and went on, because she had found a hiding place that the Gestapo could not raid.

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

The plaque on the wall of the Beje on the morning of the raid said that Jesus is Victor. She believed it then, and she believed it at the end. So may we.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Look back at the page you wrote at the start of this book. Write beneath it one thing you now believe about God’s presence there that you did not believe before.

2. Choose the chapter you would least like to read again. Reread it this week and do its application points.

3. If there is a hand you have not taken, decide today what your next step will be, and take it.

4. Tell one person the story of how God has been faithful to you in a dark place.

5. Read one of her books for yourself, beginning with The Hiding Place, and let her speak in her own voice.

A PRAYER

Lord God, You were with a watchmaker in her shop and in her cell, in the barracks and on the long road afterwards. You have been with me too.

Do not let me admire Your servant and remain unchanged. Take the truth I have seen and press it into my life until it costs me something.

Give me Your love for those I cannot forgive, Your peace for the tomorrow I fear, and Your Spirit to make me a light.

Be my hiding place. Make me a comfort to others. And keep me believing, to the end, that Jesus is Victor. Amen.