Thought for the Month
Rev Graham Warmington writes:
Dear Friends,
On the first Friday in September, Sue and I drove down to Buckfast Abbey for an Open Air Performance of a play based on "The Hiding Place", the story of Corrie ten Boom, her father Casper and her sister, Betsy from her autobiography of the same name. I must admit that we did not book our seats until Friday morning - that is, until we were certain that the weather would be fine, as we did not fancy the possibility of sitting out in the rain for a couple of hours.
Using the backdrop of the Abbey, the setting was brilliant - and being performed in the open-air enabled the use of a real German truck to off-load the prisoners at the Concentration Camp.
"The Hiding Place" was one of the first Christian biographies I read following my own conversion, and Corrie has always been one of my Heroes of Faith of the Twentieth Century. I am sure that if the Writer to the Book of Hebrews were to rewrite Chapter 11 from a 21st Century perspective he would include Corrie and her family. Both as a preacher and as a schoolteacher, I have also enjoyed retelling some of the wonderful stories about this little, initially insignificant, family living over a watchmakers shop in Haarlem in Holland - that is until the Nazi invasion of their country and the persecution of the Dutch Jews began.
Like the story of Anne Frank, secret rooms were built into their house to shelter fleeing Jews - all under the noses of the Nazis. After all who would suspect ancient Casper ten Boom and his two middle-aged spinster daughters!
Eventually in 1944 they were betrayed and arrested and sent to Concentration Camp where Casper died in a matter of days, and Betsy just before the end of the war. Two miracles happened during this time: [1] none of the sheltered Jews were ever discovered, and [2] Betsy's medicine bottle never ran dry until the day that the Red Cross sent a replacement.
One of the Christian attributes that the story of Corrie ten Boom illustrates was what Philip Yancey describes as being "achingly difficult" - that is, FORGIVENESS. When a former vicious prison guard came to her, after she had spoken at a Christian meeting, and explained that he had become a Christian and asked if she could forgive him for his treatment of her and her sister, the actors in the production illustrated how fundamentally correct Yancey is. As the former guard stood there with his hand outstretched, the actress who portrayed the personality of Corrie so wonderfully during the performance held back with great initial 'achingly difficult' reluctance until she found that she could do no other.
I believe that one of the main reasons why Christ told us to forgive seventy times seven rather than just seven times, is because it is a process that needs working through. Following Christ is never easy, and it is most certainly never easy when He calls us to walk the pathway of forgiveness.
Graham
