"For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
This week, Luke preached from Hebrews about finding the joy through suffering. While that is usually VERY difficult on our own, we should learn to teach ourselves to trust God through those sufferings. When you do, you will find much joy in horrible, awful things. Sounds a little twisted but it's so true. Just try it.......
After church I went over to my parents' house to spend the afternoon there while Bryan was at a meeting. I was telling my mom about what we learned at church and she remembered a story that she had read. The story was from the book, "The Hiding Place" by Corrie Ten Boom.
'Corrie was taken to a prison in Scheveningen, along with her father, her sister Betsie and her brother Willem. Corrie's beloved father died in prison ten days after his arrest. Corrie spent the following months of prison life sustaining herself with the words of life she found in her tiny Bible, secretly given to her by a friendly nurse during an examination. In June of 1944, Corrie and her sister Betsie were moved to Vught, a labor camp in southern Holland. Conditions at the labor camp were awful, but Corrie was thankful that they had not been sent to Germany. She was also thankful that she was able to be with her sister and around people rather than in solitary confinement as she had been in Scheveningen. Two months after arriving at Vught, Corrie was transferred to her worst nightmare: the notoriously infamous German concentration camp: Ravensbruck. If what Corrie and Betsie had faced before was in any way challenging, it was nothing compared to what they would go through at Ravensbruck. Corrie's one thought was how she could smuggle her Bible into the camp. She prayed that God would somehow make her invisible when it came her turn to be searched. Corrie would later relate with a shining face how God answered her prayer with a miracle! She was able to walk right by the guards without being touched.
Corrie was put into a cell with her sister Betsie. Her worry now was that the guards would see the Bible and take it away from them, the two sister's only source of hope and comfort. The place was so infested with fleas that the sisters could not move without instantly being covered with the bugs. Betsie told Corrie that they should thank God for the fleas, Corrie wasn't sure she could do this, but she and Betsie bowed their heads and thanked God for even the fleas. Weeks later, Corrie was struck by the blessing that came for her obedience to thank God in all circumstances; Betsie had heard a supervisor say she wouldn't step through the door of their cell because of all the fleas, and neither would the guards. It was because of the fleas that Corrie and Betsie were able to continue to keep their Bible without the guards finding it.
Corrie endured all the cruelties inflicted upon her bravely, the ones she could not bear were the ones inflicted on her already weak sister. Betsie greeted each day and each trial with the same sweet smile, rejoicing in the fact that she could share Jesus' love with her fellow prisoners. Corrie did everything in her power to help her dying sister, but the horrible conditions, rampant filth and piercing cold overtook her. Before she died, Betsie said something to Corrie that would stay with her for the rest of her life "[we]...must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been here."
Betsie was not ever able to leave the camp and tell people, but her words still made it to the world through her sister Corrie.
Two days after her sister died, Corrie was released. She would later discover that her release was an "administrative error". One week after her release all of the women in her age group were sent to the gas chambers. Only Corrie knew that there was no error, God makes no errors.'
So, last night we both saw that you need to thank God for the fleas!!!!
