I’m trying to get a little bit ahead for next term, so I’m getting some of the reading done over the break. I started with “The Hiding Place” by Corrie ten Boom. (I found a large print copy at the library, which was a blessing for my aging eyes.)
Amazing story. She was sent to a concentration camp in Nazi Germany for housing Jews. Without being able to tell the whole story here, I want to share just one amazing moment from the book… in my own admittedly lacking words.
They lived in absolute squalor. Instead of having beds, or even cots, they slept on giant platforms, one above another. They were so crowded that they would have to sleep intertwined with each other. Their bedding was rancid straw. The facilities, initially meant to hold 400 people, was housing well over 1500 (if I’m remembering right). Those near the windows nearly froze to death… some did. Those in the interior would pass out from the heat generated from people piled on top of people. The toilet facilities were far too inadequate and were always backed up and overflowing. And, to top it all off, it had a terrible flea infestation. They learned to sleep (or, better said, finally collapsed from exhaustion and sickness) with fleas gnawing on their bodies. It is almost too terrible to even think about, let alone try to actually imagine.
As Corrie ten Boom and her sister, Betsie, were saying their prayers one night, they began to thank God for everything. And I do mean everything. They thanked Him for the platforms. They thanked Him for the rancid straw. They thanked Him for the scores of dying and sick women all around them. They even thanked Him for the fleas. Amazing. How could anyone be grateful for fleas? It turns out that they had reason to be, although they didn’t know it at the time. They began noticing that the guards, who were so abusive and intolerant everywhere else in the camp, rarely ever stepped into the sleeping rooms. Upon realizing this, they began to have nightly prayer and even a Bible study with a miraculously smuggled-in Dutch Bible. Many, many women found salvation in those desperate times through those Bible studies.
It turns out (and I apologize if you haven’t read the book yet… I don’t want to spoil it for you) that the reason the guards wouldn’t enter the building was because of the serious flea infestation. There truly was reason to be thankful for a flea infestation.
This amazing story taught me two very powerful lessons.
First, that there is a reason for the challenges in our lives… even the ones that look outlandishly unfair… even the ones we struggle to understand how a loving God could allow. I’m trying to look at the fleas in my life (fortunately that’s a metaphor) in a different way now.
And secondly, that God allows even the righteous to be robbed of everything at times. It occurs to me that God puts very little stock in what a person owns, accomplishes, or even how they are treated in this life. Joseph spent years of his life in prison. Nearly all of the apostles died terrible deaths. George Muller, who had controlled millions of dollars (in today’s money) in his lifetime died with a few hundred dollars to his name. And our ultimate example, Jesus, must have appeared to the world to be a penniless failure who died a shameful death on a cross. Jesus, from the perspective of the world, was a loser… his only asset being a ragtag bunch of other losers who followed Him around.
I have struggled with why God would allow so much to be taken from me and my family during this time in our lives. I have had a real problem thinking that many in the LDS church might point to us and say, “See… look what happens when you leave the one true church!” And I’m sure some have said that very thing. From the outside we appear to be losers… we’ve lost our home, I’ve lost my career, we’ve sold nearly everything of value that we own. At times the challenge seems unbearable.
And then I remember what I asked Jesus to do in my life.
“Make me more like You.”
I meant it when I asked Him to do that. And that’s exactly what He is in the process of doing. From that perspective, I can begin to thank Him for my fleas.
He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.
How grateful I am that I have lost my life, or at least my previous life of financial prosperity, for Jesus. If others look upon us and judge, so be it. For those that would do such a thing, it is evidence of a life lived without Jesus. Or, at the very least, a lack of understanding of how He really works in people’s lives.
(Just as a side note: I do not mean to compare what I’m going through with what the holocaust victims went through. My challenges aren’t even in the same league, obviously. But in seeing how some of the Christian holocaust victims gloried in their opportunity to suffer gives me a new perspective on the suffering I am called to endure. It all pales in comparison to what Jesus suffered for us, and it is the privilege of Christians to suffer along with Him. How better to know Him than to experience some of what He experienced?)
