In Every Thing Give Thanks

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:18

Of all the stories Corrie ten Boom told, the one most often retold by others is the story of the fleas. It is short, it is surprising, and it has the shape of a parable. It is also a story that needs to be told carefully, because the way it reached print tells us something about how her testimony grew, and because the lesson inside it is harder than the charm of the telling suggests.

The story as The Hiding Place tells it

In The Hiding Place, published in 1971, Corrie recounts that when she and Betsie were moved into their permanent barracks at Ravensbrück, they found it overcrowded, filthy and infested with fleas. Corrie was near despair. Betsie reminded her of Paul’s command to the Thessalonians and insisted that they give thanks for everything in their new home, the fleas included. Corrie thought this absurd, and said so. She gave thanks anyway, because her sister asked her to. Only weeks later did they discover why the guards never came into the part of the barracks where the Bible readings were held. The supervisors would not enter because of the fleas. The very thing Corrie had resented had protected the one work that made their imprisonment bearable.

It is a wonderful story, and the lesson is plain. God can use what we hate. Thanksgiving is not a reward for understanding; it comes first, and understanding, if it comes at all, comes later.

What the earlier account says

The careful reader should know where the story first appears. As the Ochorus biography sets out, the fleas and Betsie’s thanksgiving for them are not in Corrie’s first account of the camps, written in 1945. That book speaks instead of lice, says that women from other barracks were reluctant to visit because of them, and says that as the camp grew more crowded, supervision grew slack and the Bible readings could continue undisturbed. In her recorded addresses on Ochorus, such as The Greatest of These Is Love, Corrie herself tells a version in which it is the lice that kept the guards away, and she sums it up by saying that God had used both angels and lice.

None of this makes the story false. Corrie may well have remembered Betsie’s thanksgiving clearly and simply not included it in 1945. The insect may have changed in the telling while the substance did not. What is certain is that the lesson was Betsie’s. Her whole life in the camp, as the earliest account describes it, was an exercise in giving thanks in everything.

In, and for

Paul’s command is stronger than we usually allow.

Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:16–18

Elsewhere he goes further still.

Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. EPHESIANS 5:20

How can a Christian give thanks for fleas, for a concentration camp, for a sister starving to death? The answer is not that evil is secretly good. Betsie never called Ravensbrück good; she called it hell. The answer is that God is sovereign over evil and will not let it have the last word. We give thanks not because the thing is good, but because God is present in it and will bring good out of it. The thanks are directed to Him, not to the circumstance.

But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. GENESIS 50:20

Joseph did not thank his brothers. He thanked God who had overruled them. That is the shape of Christian thanksgiving in suffering.

Appealing higher

Betsie’s habit of thanksgiving was part of a larger way of seeing. The Ochorus biography records from the 1945 account an incident in the quarantine barracks, when the women were being driven out to roll call again and again until they could barely stand. Someone proposed complaining to the camp commander. Betsie said it would do no good; they must appeal higher, to the One who rules the world. The women learned later that the commander was a brutal man and that complaint would have been dangerous. Betsie was not being pious. She was being realistic about where help actually lay.

In Power in Prayer Corrie remembers a day of particular horror in the barracks, a day on which a fellow prisoner was beaten to death. That evening Betsie, who had spent her day comforting a sleepless Polish woman with whom she shared no language, turned to Corrie and remarked on what a joyful day it had been. Corrie was astonished. But she came to understand that the worst that can befall a child of God still leaves the best untouched — that the presence of Christ is not cancelled by the cruelty of men.

Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. HABAKKUK 3:17–18

The sacrifice of praise

Thanksgiving in such places is not natural. Scripture calls it a sacrifice.

By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. HEBREWS 13:15

A sacrifice costs something. Corrie did not feel thankful for the fleas. She offered thanks because it was commanded and because her sister asked, and she did it through gritted teeth. That is worth saying to anyone who thinks thanksgiving must be sincere in the sense of spontaneous before it counts. The thanks that God asks of us in the dark are an act of the will before they are a feeling of the heart. We will meet exactly the same principle when we come to forgiveness.

And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them. ACTS 16:25

Notice the last clause. The prisoners heard them. Thanksgiving in suffering is never a private exercise. The women of Barracks 28 heard two sisters give thanks in hell, and some of them came to Christ because of it.

When the reason never comes

One honest word must be added. In the fleas story the reason for thanksgiving arrives within weeks. In most of life it does not. Corrie gave thanks for Betsie’s faith, and Betsie died. She gave thanks in Ravensbrück, and never learned on earth why many of the women she loved were killed. Thanksgiving that depends on seeing the reason will fail at the moment it is most needed.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. ROMANS 8:28

Paul says we know this. He does not say we see it. The thanks we give in the dark rest on the character of God, not on our ability to trace His purposes. Sometimes, as with the fleas, He lets us glimpse them. Often He does not. Corrie would later use the image of the underside of an embroidery for exactly this, and we will come to it. For now it is enough to say: give thanks in every thing, and leave the explanation to Him.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Name the flea in your present circumstances — the thing you most resent. Give thanks to God in it today, aloud, even if you do not feel it.

2. Keep a list for one week of things you thanked God for that you did not feel thankful for. Review it at the end of the week.

3. Before you complain to anyone about a difficulty this week, take it first to God, appealing higher.

4. Think of someone near you in a dark place. Could your thanksgiving, like Paul and Silas’s, be heard by them?

5. Read Habakkuk chapter three and make its last verses your own prayer.

A PRAYER

Father, You are Lord over the barracks and the fleas, over what I resent and what I cannot understand.

I do not feel thankful for all that has come to me, but I choose to give You thanks in it, because You are present and You are good.

Where You show me the reason, let me rejoice. Where You do not, let me trust You still.

Make my thanksgiving a sacrifice You accept, and let others hear it and turn to You. Amen.