Story
In the concentration camp at Ravensbrück, Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie were packed into a barracks so infested with fleas…
Joy · Suffering · Prayer
Ten Boom
Story
The former guard
Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place (1971)
After the war, Corrie ten Boom was speaking in a German church when a man came forward. She recognized him as a former Ravensbrück guard. He said he had become a Christian and asked her forgiveness. She writes that she could not feel it. She prayed, silently, that she would be willing, then took his hand. Only as she did it did the feeling come. Forgiveness, in her telling, was first an act of obedience, not a mood she waited to arrive.
How you’d preach it
Use when people treat forgiveness as a feeling they must manufacture. Corrie’s hand moved before her heart did. Distinguish cheap forgetfulness from costly pardon that tells the truth about the wound.
- Forgiveness
- Obedience
- Grace
Ten Boom · Ephesians 4 · Matthew 6
Ephesians 4:32; Matthew 6:14–15