Click to watch The Chosen TV series.
It is a delightful new biblical series, very engaging and playfully endearing, watched by five million people so far.
Thankfulness is the secret to a happy and fulfilled life.
October in Canada is that special time of year when farmers harvest their crops of corn, pumpkins, squash, and winter potatoes. Nowadays in our high-tech urbanized world we forget where our food comes from. In the old days, farmers waited anxiously for a good harvest, knowing that their very future depended on it. Crop failure could mean poverty or even starvation. Much of our early immigration consisted of the victims of European famines, such as the Irish potato famines. There was no Government welfare in those days to buffer a bad crop. As a result, a good crop in the Fall brought heartfelt thanksgiving.
The farmers felt so grateful that they would take part of their crop and rush into the nearest church to give thanks to the Lord of the Harvest. To celebrate a successful wheat harvest, the grain would be ground into fine flour, made into bread and eaten at the communion service. Children, in particular, enjoy seeing the fruit, flowers and vegetables decorating the church. The whole emphasis of the Harvest Thanksgiving weekend is to say “Thank you, Thank you, Thank you”. The very word “Eucharist” in the Christian Communion Service means “Thank You”.
Thankfulness is the secret to a happy and fulfilled life.
It is so easy to complain; so, easy to become bitter; so easy to become cynical about life. The best antidote for cynicism is thanksgiving. Instead of grumbling about your spouse, try thanking God for them. Instead of complaining about your work, try thanking God that you have a job. Instead of resenting your children when they’re noisy, thank God that they are alive and well.
(This is Thanksgiving Weekend in Canada. Happy Thanksgiving to our brothers and sisters in Canada.)
This week’s encouragement is from Brother Ed Hird, local director of the British Columbia Christian Ashram.
http://www.christianashramint.org
The newest edition of The Christian History Magazine is now available. This issue features articles about E. Stanley Jones, Mabel Lossing Jones, the International United Christian Ashram, and the practical ministry methods of Brother Stanley.
You can read this new issue online.
We would love to hear your feedback on this issue. You can email uca@christianashram.org to share your thoughts, insights, and questions.
Corrie Ten Boom’s Impact on Post-WWII Global Culture in Forgiveness and Reconciliation
By Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird
-an article for the May 2019 Light Magazine
Corrie Ten Boom once said: “I’ve never had the joy of bringing to birth a child, but I’ve often had the great joy to bring the rebirth to someone else. The creative life that a woman had to be married and have children, I could use in the Kingdom of God.”
After the Nazis conquered Holland, 100,000 Dutch Jews were sent to concentration camps. Corrie’s father Casper, known as the Grand Old Man of Haarlem, had a deep love of Jewish people, saying “In this house, God’s people are always welcome.” No one was turned away. Corrie similarly prayed, “Lord Jesus, I offer myself for your people. In any way. Any place. Any time.”[1] Through disguising themselves as Nazi soldiers, her underground team saved 100 Jewish babies who were about to be killed in an orphanage. A well-known architect built them a secret 2&1/2 foot wide hiding place behind a new brick wall in Corrie’s bedroom.[2] Even after arresting the Ten Booms, the Gestapo were never able to find the Jews hidden in this ‘angelcrib’ hiding place.[3] At the time of the arrest, Corrie’s interrogator painfully slapped her in the face after every question. Corrie cried out: “Lord Jesus, protect me!” He hissed at her, “If you mention that name again once more, I will kill you.” But miraculously, he stopped beating her.[4] Corrie, Betsie and their Father all glanced at their fireplace’s plaque ‘Jesus is Victor’. Corrie thought: “It looks now as if the Gestapo were the conquerors. But they are not.”[5]
Corrie and her sister Betsie hid over 800 Jewish people in their Haarlem watchmaker home, before being sent to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp in East Germany where 96,000 women died. “The sufferings of Jesus”, said Corrie, “became very real to me at Ravensbruck.”[6] She lost four family members in the concentration camps, including her beloved older sister Betsie who forgave and prayed for the guards even as they mercilessly beat her. “Don’t hate”, Betsie pleaded to Corrie. Three days before Betsie died, she shared with her sister Corrie the vision of first opening healing homes in Holland and Germany, before going around the world sharing about Jesus’ love and forgiveness. Two weeks later, Corrie was set free through a God-ordained clerical error.[7] One week after this, all the other women her age at Ravensbruck were taken to the gas chamber.
Upon returning to Holland, Corrie opened a home in Holland to bring healing for people, even including the ostracized Dutch who had collaborated with the Nazis. She was knighted by the Queen of the Netherlands for her work.
Corrie told God that she was willing to go where he wanted her to go, but hoped that he’d never send her back to Germany. Finally, after sensing a blockage in her prayer life, she repented, saying, “Yes, Lord, I’ll go to Germany too.”[8] God sent her back to Ravensbruck to lead bible studies with former guards, now in prison. All she could see was aversion and bitterness. They saw her as theologically simplistic and uncultured. The Lord said the word ‘chocolate’. Once she gave them her chocolate, they opened their hearts to her.[9] Then, she rented and cleaned up a former concentration camp in Germany to bring temporary housing and healing to some of the nine million Germans who had been bombed or driven out of their homes.[10]
In Munich, a former Ravensbruck guard said to Corrie: ‘How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein. To think, as you said, that he washes my sins away!’ Corrie later wrote, “His hand was thrust out to shake mine….Even as angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man. Was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him…Again I silently prayed ‘Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness’. As I took his hand, my heart felt an overwhelming love for this stranger.”[11]
Corrie became a penniless tramp for the Lord, travelling for three decades to 62 countries, and sleeping in over 1,000 different beds.[12] Wherever she went globally, Corrie shared from her Ravensbruck experience that the light and love of Jesus Christ is deeper than the deepest darkness. She was the favourite travelling companion of the Bible-smuggler Brother Andrew as they both did missionary work behind the Iron Curtain in Vietnam and 12 other Communist countries. In Vietnam, they gave her the honorific title of ‘Double-old Grandmother.”[13] While in the Soviet Union, she intentionally preached the gospel in her hotel room, knowing that everything she said was being listened to and recorded by communist officials.
Corrie was a unique blend of the compassion of a Mother Theresa and the evangelistic passion of Billy Graham. Through her deep friendship with Rev. Billy and Ruth Graham, Corrie’s Hiding Place book was turned into a movie reaching tens of millions. Ruth Graham said: “I didn’t know anyone who had suffered so intensely for the Lord and for his people, as Corrie had, and come through with absolutely nothing but love in her heart for her captors —she forgave them.”[14] In 1967, Corrie was recognized by Israel as a righteous gentile, planting a tree in her honour.[15] When people kept telling her how brave she was, Corrie transparently prayed, “What little courage I have…I was not brave. I was often like a timid, fluttering bird, looking for a hiding place….Lord, I am weak and cowardly and of little faith; do hold me close. Thou art the conqueror. May that assurance give me courage and loyalty.”[16]
Speaking in an African prison, Corrie said about Ravensbruck, “I knew that unforgiveness would do more harm than the guard’s whip…I could not do it. I was not able. Jesus in me was able to do it. You see, you never touch the ocean of God’s love as when you love your enemies.”[17] When Corrie shared with prisoners in Rwanda, a revival of joy and hope broke out, even among the guards. As she was leaving, the prisoners swarmed around her, chanting ‘Old woman, come back. Old woman, come back and tell us more of Jesus.”[18] Many people are unaware of the powerful international healing ministry that Corrie had, once even healing a leper in Vellore, India, through laying on of her hands.[19]
Because of her work blessing indigenous people, Corrie was adopted into the Hopi First Nation and given the name Beautiful Flower.[20] While staying at a Kansas farm, Corrie challenged her host who had recently kicked his son out, telling him to never darken his doorstep again. She said to the farmer: “If you believe in Jesus Christ and belong to Him, your sins have been cast into the depths of the sea, and that’s very deep. But then he expects also that you forgive the sins of your boy and cast them into the depths of the sea. Just imagine how you would feel if there should be another war, if your son had to go back into service and was killed in action. Don’t you think you should forgive him right now?” After riding together in silence, the farmer invited Corrie to go with him where he asked his son to forgive him. His son replied:” But, Father. I should ask you for forgiveness.”[21]
In her late sixties, Corrie was betrayed and hurt by some Christians she loved and trusted: “You would have thought that, having been able to forgive the guards in Ravensbruck, forgiving Christian friends would be child’s play. It wasn’t. For weeks, I seethed inside. But at last I asked God again to work His miracle in me…I was restored to the Father.” She later burnt the painful letters from her friends, as a sign of letting go.[22] Are you willing, like Corrie, to find victory through surrendering your unforgiveness?
Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird -co-authors of For Better, For Worse: discovering the keys to a lasting relationship.
Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.
[1] Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place (Chosen Books, Bantam Books, Fleming H Revell, New York, New York, 1971), p. 114
[2] Ten Boom, The Hiding Place, p. 120.
[3] Corrie Ten Boom, A Prisoner— and Yet (Christian Literature Crusade, London, UK, 1954), p.12.
[4] Ten Boom, A Prisoner— and Yet, p. 13.
[5] Ten Boom, A Prisoner— and Yet, p. 15.
[6] Ten Boom, A Prisoner— and Yet, p. 87.
[7] Ten Boom, The Hiding Place, p. 241
[8] Corrie Ten Boom, Amazing Love, (Christian Literature Crusade, London, UK, 1954), p. 27
[9] Ten Boom, Amazing Love, p. 31.
[10] Ten Boom, Amazing Love, p. 36.
[11] Ten Boom The Hiding Place, p. 238.
[12] Corrie Ten Boom & Jamie Beckingham, Tramp for the Lord (BBS Publishing Company, New York, 1975, 1995)
P.185.
[13] Ten Boom, The Hiding Place, p. vii.
[14] Corrie Ten Boom “The Lives She Touched” video Ruth Graham: “When I met Corrie, the thing that really impressed me was the twinkle in her eye. There was nothing but love and forgiveness.”
[15] Ten Boom, The Hiding Place, p. 138.
[16] Ten Boom, A Prisoner— and Yet, p. 129.
[17] Ten Boom & Beckingham, Tramp for the Lord, p. 233.
[18] Ten Boom & Beckingham, Tramp for the Lord, p. 236.
[19] Ten Boom & Beckingham, Tramp for the Lord, p. 274.
[20] Corrie Ten Boom “The Lives She Touched” video
[21] Ten Boom, Amazing Love, p. 10.
[22] Ten Boom & Beckingham, Tramp for the Lord, p. 310.
Pastor Chuck Smith was an amazing pioneer. Click in our Light Magazine article to read.
One of my favorite posters that was seen everywhere in the 1970s Jesus Movement. 🙂
If you love family drama in a Christian setting then this book is for you. A pastoral couple, Ed and Janice Hird, who have led marriage and renewal conferences around the globe, write BLUE SKY. Ed and Janice understand family dynamics and bring their Blue Sky drama to life in this Spokane city setting. This book draws you into the family, but also into the redemptive and loving character of God during life’s difficult places. If you love Karen Kingsbury’s books, you’ll want to read about the ups and downs of the Brown clan.
Michael Brunner from Texas giving an excellent bible teaching at the online North American Christian Ashram. Worth reposting. Do you ever struggle with feelings of not measuring up? How can Jesus help you with defining your true identity, and overcome worry, fear and anxiety? Click to learn more about the International United Christian Ashram movement.
Does Jesus still heal today in body, mind and spirit? How do medicine and prayer relate? Check out Matt Henson’s helpful address given at the online North American Christian Ashram. Matt Henson is our new Executive Director for the International United Christian Ashram movement. You are encouraged to repost this to others.
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