Prior to the attack the Prime Minister addressed the nation and gave assurance there would be no war, Holland’s neutrality would be respected. The ten Booms, Corrie, Betsie and their father, were listening to the message that evening and suddenly their father stood up and in anger turned the radio off. Corrie shares that there was a fire in his blue eyes that they had never seen.
“It is wrong to give
the people hope when there is no hope,” he said. “It is wrong to base faith on
wishes. There will be war, the Germans will attack and we will fall.”
His voice softened and he said to his daughters:“Oh my dears, I am sorry for all the Dutchmen now who don’t know the power of God. For we will be beaten. But He will not.”
Five hours after the Prime Minister’s speech, Germany
attacked Holland and Corrie and Betsie woke to the sound of bombs and planes,
and fire lit up the night sky, but their father slept. They huddled together in
Betsie's bed talking and praying. They prayed for their country, the Queen and
Betsie prayed for the Germans, flying the planes.
And then Corrie had a vision. She said it was like a dream
but she wasn’t asleep. “I saw the Grote Markt, half a block away, as clearly as though I was standing there, saw the town hall and St. Bavo’s and the fish mart with its stair-stepped façade.
Then as I watched, a
kind of odd, old farm wagon—old fashioned and out of place in the middle of a
city—came lumbering across the square pulled by four enormous black horses. To
my surprise I saw that I myself was sitting in the wagon. And Father too! And
Betsie! There were many others, some strangers, some friends. I recognized
Pickwick and Toos, Willem and young Peter. All together we were slowly being
drawn across the square behind those horses. We couldn’t get off the wagon,
that was the terrible thing. It was taking us away—far away, I felt—but we didn’t
want to go…
‘Betsie!’ I cried, jumping
up, pressing my hand to my eyes. ‘Betsie, I’ve had such an awful dream!’They went to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee as Corrie told Betsie what she had seen.
‘Am I imagining things
because I’m frightened? But it wasn’t like that! It was real. Oh Betsie, was it
a kind of vision?’
'I don’t know,’ she
said softly. ‘But if God has shown us bad times ahead, it enough for me that He
knows about them. That why He sometimes shows us things, you know—to tell us
that this too is in His hands.’
Corrie wrote that realization of the horror of the occupation was gradual. As
arrests of Jews became more and more frequent, Corrie began personally
delivering the repaired watches and clocks to their Jewish customers, that they
might be spared going out in the streets to come to the shop. On one of her
deliveries, she visited with a family over tea, and as they talked, everything
appeared so normal—and at that moment the reality hit Corrie, and she knew
everything had changed. The father of the house was tucking his children into bed
and and as she listened to the children’s laughter she knew at any moment there
could come a knock at the door and the family could be taken away. As their
conversation continued a prayer formed in Corrie’s heart:
‘”Lord Jesus, I offer
myself for your people. In any way. In any place. Any time.’
And then an
extraordinary thing happened.
Even as I prayed, that
waking dream passed again before my eyes. I saw again those four black horses
and the Grote Markt. As I had on the night of the invasion I scanned the
passengers drawn so unwillingly behind them. Father, Betsie, Willem, myself—leaving
Haarlem, leaving all that was sure and safe—going where?”The ten Booms’ home and tiny watch repair shop—the Beje—became the center of an underground network that provided refuge, provisions and escape for their Jewish countrymen, a network that spread to the four corners of Holland.
When their house was raided and they, along with others, were interrogated and finally loaded on a rickety bus, Corrie watched out the window as they drove across the Grote Markt:
"In a strange way it seemed to me that I had lived through this moment before.
Then I recalled.
The vision.
The night of the invasion. I had seen it all. Willhelm, Nollie, Pickwick, Peter—all of us here—drawn against our wills across this square. It had all been in the dream—all of us leaving Haarlem, unable to turn back, going where?”
And the prayer Corrie had prayed in her heart, offering herself for His people, He fulfilled it in her life. She, along with Betsie, ministered Jesus to untold numbers in Scheveningen and Ravensbruck and when Corrie was released, she went on to minister all over the world.
"This is what the past is for. Every experience God give us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see." -Corrie ten Boom
No comments:
Post a Comment