Faithful in That Which Is Least

Who hath despised the day of small things? ZECHARIAH 4:10

The story of Corrie ten Boom is usually told as though it began in 1942, when the first Jewish refugee knocked at the door of the Beje. It did not. It began half a century earlier, at a watchmaker’s bench, in a household where God was expected to be interested in very small things. Before she taught anyone about Ravensbrück, she had spent twenty years learning that a mechanism keeps good time only if every hidden part does its work. It is not fanciful to think that the lesson went deep. Her whole teaching about God’s care rests on it.

God’s name on the shop

Corrie liked to tell audiences about her father’s attitude to the business. In the recorded address Total Surrender, now in the Ochorus library, she recalls that Casper ten Boom used to say, in effect, that his own name was painted over the watch shop but that God’s name really belonged there. The shop was not a secular compartment of a religious life. It was the place where the religion was lived. He prayed over it, talked to customers about God in it, and ran it with a generosity that made it a poor business and a rich household.

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. COLOSSIANS 3:23

This is the first mark of her teaching on providence, and it is worth noticing how unlike a theory it is. She did not argue that God governs the details of life; she took it for granted, because she had grown up in a house that took it for granted. Every meal began with the Bible. Every week the family prayed for the peace of Jerusalem, as the household had done for generations. A customer’s watch, a neighbour’s trouble, a child’s bedtime prayer were all matters for God. When the great tests came, they came to people who already expected Him to be present in small rooms.

Sent back to the maker

She had a way of turning her trade into parables. In Power in Prayer she remembers that when new watches arrived at the shop that did not keep time, she did not try to repair them herself. She sent them back to the manufacturer, who knew how they were made. She told her hearers that she did the same with her faith. When it would not run, she did not tinker with it; she sent it back to Jesus, whom Scripture calls its author and finisher.

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. HEBREWS 12:2

The point is a good one, and it is the heart of what she meant by trusting God in small things. Most anxious Christians try to repair their own faith. They examine it, measure it, worry that it is too small, and try harder to believe. Corrie’s counsel, drawn from the workbench, was to stop looking at the mechanism and look at the Maker. In the same address she borrows a saying of Hudson Taylor’s — that what we need is not great faith but faith in a great God — and she adds the Lord’s own word about the mustard seed. The size of faith was never the point. Its object was.

If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove. MATTHEW 17:20

Nothing too small

In the same address she puts her whole doctrine of providence into a single contrast: nothing is too small for God’s love, and nothing is too great for His power. The first half of that sentence is the harder one to believe. Most of us will readily agree that God rules nations and galaxies. We are less sure He cares about a lost key, a sick cat, a difficult colleague or a watch that runs five minutes slow. We feel that such things are beneath Him, and so we carry them ourselves.

Jesus corrected exactly that feeling.

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. MATTHEW 10:29–30

A sparrow was the cheapest thing in the market. A hair is the most trivial thing about a person. The Lord chose both deliberately. If God attends to sparrows and counts hairs, then there is no detail of your life too small to bring to Him, and none too small for Him to use.

A prayer of seventy-five years

Corrie’s favourite illustration of this was a story from her own life, told in Power in Prayer. As a very small child she had prayed, day after day, for the people of a rough street behind the family house. It was the kind of prayer adults smile at: a five-year-old asking God to save a whole street. Seventy-five years later, after she had spoken on Dutch television, she received a letter from a woman whose husband had lived in that very street for many years and had been moved by what he heard. She took it as an answer to a child’s prayer, and she told the story to encourage people who had prayed for years and seen nothing.

The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. PSALM 37:23

The lesson she drew was simple. No prayer is lost. God’s answers are often slow, but they are sure, and some of the joys of heaven, she thought, would be the discovery of answers we never saw on earth. Keep praying for the son, the husband, the neighbour, the street.

Faithful in little

There is a second side to her teaching on small things, and it concerns not God’s faithfulness but ours. The years at the watchmaker’s bench, the girls’ clubs and the classes for disabled people were not glamorous. No one praised them. Yet when the underground needed people who could keep many threads in their hands, organise ration cards, remember addresses, drill guests with a stopwatch and do the same careful thing correctly every day, the ten Booms were ready, because they had been practising faithfulness in little for decades.

Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful. 1 CORINTHIANS 4:2

That is a word for anyone who thinks their real life has not yet started. The quiet years are not a waiting room. They are a workshop. God forms in them the habits He will need later — patience, precision, reliability, the instinct to make room for others. Corrie did not know, at forty, what she was being prepared for. Neither do we.

A caution about signs

It must be said, in fairness, that a doctrine of providence in small things can go wrong. Some Christians begin to read every coincidence as a message and every small event as a sign, and end by making decisions on the strength of a parking space. Corrie told many stories of striking answers to prayer, and she told them with delight. She did not, however, teach people to live by omens. Her confidence was in God’s character, not in her own ability to decode His ways, and she was quite willing to say that much of His working is hidden from us until the end. We will return to that theme when we come to the underside of the embroidery.

The balance is the one the Lord Himself gave. The Father feeds the birds; therefore do not be anxious. That is a reason for trust, not a system for guidance. We are to bring everything to Him, expect His care in everything, and leave the interpretation to Him.

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. 1 PETER 5:7

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Name one area of your daily work that you have treated as outside God’s interest. Pray over it tomorrow before you begin.

2. Is your faith in need of repair? Instead of examining it again, spend ten minutes this week simply looking at Christ in one of the Gospels.

3. Bring one small, even trivial, worry to God today in plain words, and leave it with Him.

4. Think of someone you have prayed for over many years without visible answer. Renew that prayer now, and resolve not to stop.

5. Do one unnoticed task this week with the same care you would give it if it were going to be praised.

A PRAYER

Father, You number the hairs of my head and see the sparrow fall. Forgive me for thinking any part of my life too small for You.

I bring You my work, my home and the little tasks no one sees. Let Your name be over them.

When my faith will not run true, I send it back to You, its Author and Finisher. Mend what I cannot mend.

Keep me faithful in little, and prepare me now for whatever You will ask of me later. Amen.