This Monday marks the birthday of one of the 20th centuries greatest heroes of the faith: Corrie Ten Boom.
It also marks the anniversary of the day she passed away in 1981 at 91 and reunited with her family, including the sister who died in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Germans sentenced both Ten Boom women there for harboring Jews during World War II.
Those who best know of Ten Boom’s overcoming faith probably learned of it in her famous autobiography, “The Hiding Place,” which focused on her life before, during, and shortly after World War II. But in 1917, Ten Boom wrote another book, “Tramp for the Lord,” chronicling the decades she spent traveling to more than 60 countries to share the gospel.
And in this book, she recounts one particular encounter in Germany in 1947 — one that echoes in my heart as politicians smother me in more and more commercials in anticipation of Indiana’s primary Tuesday, May 7.
According to these commercials, every other candidate hates America, hates apple pie, hates democracy, and hates puppies.
And quite candidly, I’m sick of people treating other people not as people, but as political boogeymen.
But Ten Boom’s account gives me hope, even as it convicts me to see my favorite enemies as people too.
According to Ten Boom, she had just finished speaking about God’s forgiveness at a church in Munich when a bald, heavyset man in a gray overcoat and carrying a brown hat approached her.
Everyone else left without talking to her, but this man apparently needed to say something.
But as he approached, Ten Boom quickly recognized him from her past — when he wasn’t wearing a grey overcoat but a blue German uniform, and he didn’t carry a brown hat then; he wore a visored cap with skull and crossbones.
“It came back with a rush,” Ten Boom wrote in her account, “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.
“The man who was making his way forward had been a guard — one of the most cruel guards.”
In the past, the guard would have only referred to Ten Boom by her prisoner number, but in 1947 in the church in Munich, he referred to her respectfully as “fraulein.” He thanked her for her message about forgiveness.
And he reached out his hand; he wanted her to shake the same hand that once held — and used — a leather crop.
“I have become a Christian,” he continued saying. “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.
“Will you forgive me?”
Ten Boom knew she needed to say yes; she knew because Jesus commanded it, and she knew because she had counseled many war victims to forgive. If they did, she knew, they could rebuild their lives.
But, “Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids.
“It was as simple as horrible as that.”
And so she prayed. She pleaded to Jesus for help, and she lifted her hand.
“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.”
With tears in her eyes, Ten Boom cried, “I forgive you, brother … with all my heart.
“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.”
I wonder if Ten Boom and this guard embraced each other on April 15, 1981 — before bowing before the one who had forgiven them both, the one who can forgive the vilest of sinners, the one who sees their sin, hates their sin, condemns their sin, but still sees in them the image of God.
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