Today, as a part of our Friday morning pancake and theology routine at the Anderson Mesa, we took a break from R.C. Sproul lectures and watched a short animated film about Corrie Ten Boom, storied author of "The Hiding Place." To call it a film is a stretch, as it was a cartoon produced by specifically for the yewts (that's yooooths for non cousin Vinnie speakers). Even so, it pulled no punches and depicted the realities of the horrific treatment of Jews and others who chose to help them throughout the Nazi occupation of Holland in the 1940's. Our son had read the book in school last year and so offered some additional commentary (once again showed up by my 13 year old).
I was struck by a particular facet of Corrie and her sister Betsy's life in the Nazi concentration camp. Their barracks (read that as "shack") where they were assigned to sleep was infested with fleas. Upon arriving to their new digs, Corrie was quite distressed by this fact. Her sister's insistence that they live out the scriptures by "giving thanks for all things" brought a miniscule boost to her resilience as they lie upon bare hay lined wood frames itching and thanking God for the fleas. Betsy later made the observation that theirs was only place that the guards would not go, on account of the infestation. This allowed them a single place where Corrie could fetch the tiny Bible that she had smuggled in her dress, reading God's word aloud in the hearing of all the women who were shoved together in that place. Betsy commented to her sister, "God even controls the fleas."
This comes, for me, on the heels of a day in the emergency department where we saw several deaths (including 18 and 35 year old men without any precipitating medical factors), strokes, heart attacks, traumas, ridiculous angry people, staffing problems, etc, etc. We walk, as Douglas Wilson famously said, "on the precipice of eternity." After days such as these, it feels as though the dirt beneath your feet may just be a bit looser than you had previously thought it to be. For a Christian in healthcare, it can be a struggle to reconcile the greatness of God's sovereignty with the goodness of his steadfast love. Wilson also points out that it is only the Christian who can treat death as an enemy, further, as an enemy defeated by Christ in his death, burial and resurrection. For those who deny God's existence and hold to a worldview that sees all things as random and without a foundation of meaning outside of what we ourselves assign, death and suffering just are. We would have no other reason to be disconcerted by pain other than we don't like it. The universe shrugs and moves on about its business of being cold and aimless. But I digress.
In the end, the goodness and greatness of God are held together (along with truth, justice and mercy) in the cross of Christ. "God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died." While the solid rock of scripture gives us all we need for life and salvation, it is useful to look to history for stories of how this love has worked out in the lives of his people through the ages, from the apostles to Dutch resistors in the 20th century.
I was greatly encouraged by a little 30 minute cartoon about Corrie Ten Boom's life, probably more so than my children. In retelling a part of the story I hope to point you towards a foundation on which to ground your tenacity and solidify your grit by believing that, in God's providence, even fleas have purpose. Let's let Corrie send us off now in her own words when she said, "God does not have problems, only plans."
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