During Lent, I have been reading my family The Hiding Place, the account of how Corrie Ten Boom’s family hid Jews in their home, were discovered, and got sent to a concentration camp.
Four of the Ten Booms died—the number of Jews they saved is something like 800.
I last read this book as a teenager, and the dramatic scenes of great cruelty met with great holiness made a huge impression on me.
I remember the miraculously multiplying vitamin drops that kept the prisoners alive; I remember the scene where Corrie’s sister was thanking God for everything they had, including a horrendous infestation of fleas.
Corrie was horrified that her sister wanted her to thank God even for the fleas, but her sister insisted. Later, it turned out these vermin were a kind of protective army for the prisoners—the guards didn’t want to come into the infested barracks, and so the prisoners were allowed to continue the prayer and scripture readings that kept them from despair.
I also remember reading an account of Corrie Ten Boom, many decades later, meeting one of the very guards who imprisoned and tortured her family, and how she took his hand and forgave him.
The flea story very often comes to mind, and I use it as shorthand for when I’m stymied by something in my life and I can’t think of any way to deal with it rationally. So I just go, “Okay, God, thanks for the fleas, I guess.”
I can’t really relate to Ten Booms’ heroic level of trust in God’s goodness, and in fact I tend to crumble under some extremely light burdens. I don’t think I’d be one of the ones organising prayer sessions in a prison barracks.
But I understand the general concept of what they were doing. I can break off a little piece of this story for myself and carry it around for when things get hairy, by my standards.
As for the other story, the story of supernatural forgiveness of a sadistic murderer—I remember it, but it goes way over my head. It’s something beyond my experience and beyond my imagination, and all I can do is stand in my low place and behold it, like a fiery sign in the sky.
But they are both part of the account of how the Ten Booms lived, and how they died; and the entire book is hitting me very different, this time around. The parts that are standing out to me are not so much the brilliant acts of holy heroism by this family, or even the more relatable inspiring examples they set. Instead, I’m noting all the little things that got them there.
The book doesn’t begin in the concentration camp. It begins in the little house in the little neighbourhood in the little country that has no intention of getting involved in a war.
The family fixes watches, and they have all the ordinary concerns of any family: What to cook, what to wear, how to get along with annoying people, how to divvy up chores. They get sick, they have parties, they fight and make up.
But the way they live their everyday lives, I am noticing in this reading, is absolutely bristling with small acts of gentle holiness. Little efforts of generosity. A heartfelt prayer after romantic heartbreak. Sadness and imploring, rather than contempt, when they do encounter evil.
At one point, Corrie mentions casually that, if I remember right, dozens of foster children lived in their home at one time or another. The entire orientation of their lives, in tiny ways, medium ways, and unthinkably heroic ways, was of being open to what God wanted.
In retrospect, everything they did was preparing them, shoring them up, to be ready for the more dramatic and heroic sacrifices they would eventually be called upon to make.
These things don’t come out of nowhere. It might look like they do, until you look back and re-read the past with more attention. And then you will see all the little efforts, little devotions, little sacrifices, little acts of faith, hope, and charity that did the patient work of building up a dense and compact foundation that could hold up under the weight of heroic demands.
But of course looking back is not sufficient. When you read a story of how someone made good come out of evil, it’s not enough to admire them, whether you focus on the glorious end result, or dig down into the little steps that led them there.
Out of sheer honesty, when we come upon a story like this, it behooves us to stop and take it personally. Look at our lives right now, and consider what it is we are building with the unremarkable actions that make up our days.
Whether our lives are working up to some great earthly trial of suffering and persecution, or if we’re just following the path of every mortal being, which leads up to the final crisis of our solitary meeting with God, we will find out what it is we spent our life preparing to do.
Because make no mistake: You are preparing yourself, one way or the other. You are either preparing for holiness, or you are preparing to reject holiness.
Acts of great goodness do not come out of nowhere. If you want to be holy—and I believe most of us do, deep down—you must start building the foundation now.
If we see that we’re building toward something disastrous or weak, it’s not too late. We have many, many chances, and many, many opportunities to change our lives, one little movement at a time, and set out on a different trajectory.
But we don’t have endless time. Eventually, night cometh. Thanks be to God that we know this is so.