Tramp for the Lord (7 page)

We returned to the camp in silence, but I knew the Holy Spirit was pricking her heart, reminding her of the things that man cannot snatch from us.

Soon it was time for me to leave the camp and move on to other fields. The day I left she was sitting in that same corner of the room. A boy was playing his mouth organ, a baby was crying, there were the sounds of shouts and the pounding of a hammer against a wooden crate. The room was full of discord and disharmonic noises. But her eyes were closed, and there was a faint smile on her face. I knew God had given her something that no one could take from her ever again.

After the war Germany was filled with wounds and scars—not all of them on the surface. In one tiny cubicle in the camp at Darmstadt, I found a German lawyer. He was sitting miserably in a wheelchair, the stumps of his legs poking out from under a lap blanket. He was filled with bitterness, hatred and self-pity. He told me he had once been an active member of his Lutheran church and as a boy had rung the church bell in the village where he lived. Now the horrible injustice of war had taken his legs, and he was bitter against God and man.

I felt attracted to him since some of his experiences were similar to mine. One morning I made a special trip to his room to tell him something of my life.

I found him sitting in his wheelchair, staring at a blank wall. His face was gray, his eyes lifeless. I never was one for introductions, so I got right to the point of my visit.

“The only way to get rid of bitterness is to surrender it,” I said.

He turned slowly and looked at me. “What do you know about bitterness?” he asked. “You still have your legs.”

“Let me tell you a story,” I said. “In Holland, during the war, a man came to me begging me to help him liberate his wife. I felt compassion for him and gave him all my money. I also convinced my friends to do the same. But the man was a quisling, a traitor. The only reason he came to me was to trap me so he could have me arrested. Not only did he betray me, but he betrayed my entire family and friends. We were all sent to prison where three members of my family died.

“You ask me about bitterness and hatred. You only hate circumstances, but I hated a man. Sitting in the prison in my homeland, waiting to be transferred to a concentration camp in Germany, hatred and bitterness filled my heart. I wanted that man to die. I know what it is like to hate. That is why I can understand you.”

The lawyer turned his chair to face me. He was listening. “So, you have hated also. What do you suggest I do about my hate?”

“What I have to say is of no importance. Let me tell you what the Son of God had to say. ‘For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses’ (see Matt. 6:14–15). If we forgive other people, our hearts are made fit to receive forgiveness.”

The lawyer shifted uneasily in his wheelchair. I could see the muscles in his neck stand out as he pushed with his hands to change position. “When we repent,” I continued, “God forgives us and cleanses us. That is what I did, believing that if I confessed my sin God would be faithful and just to cleanse my sin and forgive me from all unrighteousness.”

The lawyer looked at me and shook his head. “That is easy to say, but my hatred is too deep to have it washed away.”

“No deeper than mine,” I said. “Yet when I confessed it, not only did Jesus take it away, He filled me with love—even the ability to love my enemy.”

“You mean you actually loved the man who betrayed you and who was responsible for the death of your family?”

I nodded. “After the war, when that man was sentenced to death, I corresponded with him, and God used me to show him the way of salvation before he was executed.”

The lawyer shook his head. “What a miracle! What a miracle! You mean Jesus can do that to a person? I shall have to give this much thought.”

Since I have learned not to push a person beyond where God has left him, I bade my friend goodbye and returned to my room.

A year later I was in Darmstadt again. My friends had given this man a car with special fixtures so he could drive without legs. He met me at the train station to bring me to the camp. As I got in the car, he laughed at my startled look.

“You taught me that Jesus is victor,” he said. “Now surely you are not afraid to drive with a man who has no legs.”

“You are right,” I answered. “I shall not be afraid. I am so glad to see you again. How are you?”

“Fine. I must tell you at the very beginning that I have surrendered my bitterness to God. I repented, and the Lord did just as you said. He forgave me and filled my heart with His love. Now I am working in the refugee camp and am praising God that He can use even a legless man if he is surrendered.”

He paused, and then continued. “But there is something I must know. After you forgave your enemies, was it settled once and for all?”

“Oh no,” I answered. “Just this month I had a sad experience with friends who behaved like enemies. They promised something but did not keep their promise. In fact, they took great advantage of me. However, I surrendered my bitterness to the Lord, asked forgiveness and He took it away.”

We were bouncing over a bumpy road, but the lawyer was more intent on me than his driving. “Was the bitterness gone for good, then?”

“No, just the next night, at four o’clock, I awoke and my heart was filled with bitterness again. I thought,
How could my dear friend behave as she did?
Again, I brought it to the Lord. He filled my heart with His love. But the next night it came back again. I was so discouraged. God had used me often to help people to love their enemies, and I could always give my testimony about what He had done in my life; but now I felt defeated.

“Then I remembered Ephesians 6:10–20 where Paul describes the ‘armour of God.’ He said that even after you have come to a standstill, still stand your ground. I was at a standstill, so I decided to stand my ground, and the bitterness and resentment fell away before me.

“Corrie ten Boom without the Lord Jesus cannot be victorious. I need the Lord every moment. And I have learned that I am absolutely dependent on Him. Because of this He has made me rich.”

We were just arriving at the refugee camp, and my lawyer friend parked before the building, turned off the motor and looked at me with a grin. “I am glad to hear that,” he said. “For sometimes my old bitterness returns. Now I shall just stand my ground, claim the victory of Jesus over fear and resentment, and love even when I don’t want to.”

My friend had learned well the secret of victory. It comes through obedience.

We feel this warm love everywhere within us because God has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love
.

Romans 5:5,
LB

I
t 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. “When we confess our sins,” I said, “God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. And even though I cannot find a Scripture for it, I believe God then places a sign out there that says
NO FISHING ALLOWED
.”

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 visored 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!

The place was Ravensbruck, and the man who was making his way forward had been a guard—one of the most cruel guards.

Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, Fraulein! 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. Fraulein,”—again the hand came out—“will you forgive me?”

And I stood there—I whose sins had again and again been 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.
Jesus, help me!
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. But even so, I realized it was not my love. I had tried, and did not have the power. It was the power of the Holy Spirit as recorded in Romans 5:5: “… because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.”

(Reprinted by permission from
Guidepost
Magazine, ¨© 1972 by Guideposts Associates, Inc., Carmel, New York 10512.)

And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness…. And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about
.

Luke 4:1, 14

A
s I stood in the railroad station in Basel, Switzerland, waiting for my luggage, I suddenly realized that I did not know where I was supposed to go. For ten years after my release from prison, I had been traveling all over the world at the direction of God. Many times I did not know why I was to go to a certain place until I arrived. It had become almost second nature not to make my plans and then ask for God’s signature. Rather, I had learned to wait for God’s plan and then write my name on the schedule.

But this time was different. Suddenly I was in Basel and had no idea why, or whom I was to contact. Besides, I was tired. Sleeping each night in a different bed and always living out of a suitcase had worn me down. I felt a sensation of panic in my heart and sat down, trying to remember to whom I was going. At sixty-three years of age, could it be that I was so overworked that I was losing my memory? Or even worse, had God withdrawn His conscious presence from me to let me walk alone for a season?