PERSONAL STORY

                               Corrie Ten Boom

"PERSONAL STORY" pages are encouragement to help you realize you are not alone.  Others have traveled along the path; others have sought comfort from God Himself; others have found freedom.  So can you!  We invite you to let the experiences of others encourage you, and to begin to know, understand and feel Comfort directly from our Father in heaven.


Corrie Ten Boom describes her experience with forgiveness when she was confronted with Nazi guard years after her release from a wartime work camp.  She explains that she was confronted with her own inability to grant forgiveness to the guard. The release came when she recalled Romans 5:5: “And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”  Upon recalling this truth in scripture, the love flowed from her heart as the Scripture promises…..

“It was in a church in Munich that I saw him - a balding, heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands.   People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear.  It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.  It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land and I gave them my favorite mental picture. 

Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown.  v‘When we confess our sins,’ I said, ‘God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever..…’  The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe.  There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947.  People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room.

And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others.  One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a cap with its skull and crossbones.  It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights; the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor; the shame of walking naked past this man.  I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin.  Betsie, how thin you were! 

Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent.  Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: "A fine message, Fräulein!  How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!"

And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand.  He would not remember me, of course - how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?  But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt.  I was face-to-face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.  ‘You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk,’ he was saying, ‘I was a guard there.’  No, he did not remember me.  "But since that time," he went on, "I have become a Christian.  I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well.  Fräulein, again the hand came out – will you forgive me?"

“And I stood there - I whose sins again and again had to be forgiven - and could not forgive.  Betsie had died in that place - could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?  It could not have been many seconds that he stood there - hand held out - but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.  For I had to do it - I knew that.  The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us.  "If you do not forgive men their trespasses," Jesus says, "neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses." 

I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience.  Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality.  Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars.  Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids.  It was as simple and as horrible as that.

“And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart.  But forgiveness is not an emotion - I knew that too.  Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.  Help!  I prayed silently.  I can lift my hand.  I can do that much.  You supply the feeling.  And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me.  And as I did, an incredible thing took place.  The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands.  And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.  "I forgive you, brother!" I cried. "With all my heart!"  For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner.  I had never known God’s love so intensely, as I did then.

The Holy Spirit’s love is shed abroad in our hearts; this is the fountainhead of the river of life flowing from our inmost being.  As we grope along in this painful process, learning to release our offenders through God’s power, we can walk totally free of condemnation.  God does not condemn us in our struggle, for He has made full provision for us in Christ Jesus.  Condemnation does not come from God, but from our misconceptions of Him. 
Condemnation always causes us to inwardly recoil from the living God; but desperation drives us to Him.

Corrie could have experienced shame for her inability to extend her hand, reproaching herself for preaching on forgiveness and then turning around and then being wholly unable to grant it!  Instead, she inwardly called out to God and received the very life of Christ.  She substituted her sinful heart for his righteous heart.
 
For most of us this change in emotion may be a longer process, but it will come, for Christ is the source. He is life.  He is love.  He is the source of our forgiveness.

 
Click HERE to go back to "Week Six Outline".

Click HERE to go to the next Reading "Forgiveness and Choice"