During the
Second World war Corrie Ten Boom and her family were arrested and sent to a Nazi prison camp for providing false ID’s and Passports to their Jewish neighbors. In her book, “The Hiding Place” she tells their story.
She relates how she and her friend, Betsie, were housed in an overcrowded barracks packed with other women and filled with fleas.Betsie had smuggled in a Bible and each evening she would conduct a forbidden Worship Service with Betsie and other incarcerated Christians. For some unknown reason the guards avoided entering this barracks.
One evening while reading First Thessalonians Betsie came across these words: “Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances.”
Hearing these words, Betsie thanked God for “Everything in these barracks; for the crowding; the jammed, crammed, stuffed, packed, suffocating crowds, and for the fleas.”
This prayer was “too much” for Corrie, but Betsie insisted, “…give thanks in all circumstances.” she quoted, again. “We thank you God for the fleas.”
Several weeks later Betsie overheard one of the guards tell a peer that she would never go into “That” barracks as it was too full of fleas. The fleas had made worship possible and in many other ways, life slightly less impossible.
It’s so easy to be thankful for our great country, our families who love us, good food, clean water, roads, friends, pretty flowers and butterflies. But can we also be thankful for the “fleas” we have in our life. That’s much harder, at least it is for me.
If you have not read “The Hiding Place”, you owe it to your family to get a copy. It’s a short book and would make a super meditation for Advent or Lent. I guarantee your middle school and high school kids will find it “Awesome.”