The following article is a part of the “Letters to…” series written by the 2023-2024 SOLA Writing Cohort, composed of college students and recent grads receiving mentorship to grow in their ability to express their faith through writing. The cohort members were given various prompts with the challenge to write an open letter to a specific recipient but one that would encourage and challenge a broader Christian audience. The prompt of this article is “Writing a Letter to My Spiritual Hero.”
What future does God have in store for me? The Bible often emphasizes that God only has goodness in store for his people. And yet, the Bible itself, along with the pages of history, is filled with stories of God’s people suffering in the center of a whole world of pain and hurt.
The classic apologetics question is, “How can a good God allow evil?” The biblical apologetics answer is clear: God does not allow evil to prevail ultimately and sends his Son to provide redemption, even for people like us who too often choose evil in our own lives. However, the truth in this answer doesn’t seem enough when I face pain and am forced to watch suffering. What does it mean to believe in Christ and face evil?
To me, that answer has really been found in the life of a spiritual hero of mine whom I have actually never met. Corrie Ten Boom was a woman of God who not only wrote and spoke about God’s truths but also lived out her faith amidst extreme evil and suffering. Although Corrie had grown up as the quiet daughter of a watchmaker in the Netherlands, everything had changed during the war as she and her family coordinated underground operations in their city to protect Jews.
Corrie’s childhood home was converted into a hiding place as she herself stepped up to lead resistance efforts. This ultimately resulted in her and her family being taken to Nazi concentration camps when she was in her 50s. During this time, Corrie personally faced intense suffering, which she wrote about in her autobiography, The Hiding Place. This letter is addressed to Corrie, and it shares how she has impacted my life.
Dear Corrie,
I read The Hiding Place in high school, and to this day, I often share your story with my friends of different faith backgrounds. Your words still bring comfort to me when I find myself facing an uncertain future. As I trust the words of the Bible and remind myself that God, in his goodness, does orchestrate a future of goodness for me, your story encourages me to set my eyes on God’s tapestry. I hope to share three encouragements from your life that inspire me to view suffering in light of our good God.
1. Remembering suffering along with his sovereignty
In the pages of your autobiography, you shared how difficult it was to remember God, care for your fellow prisoners, and forgive your captors. And yet, in the midst of this suffering, God revealed his goodness to you in such miraculous ways.
God was good to you when he helped you sneak a Bible into your concentration camp when all other personal belongings were taken away. God was good to you when fleas infested your room, as you later realized it allowed you to hold Bible studies boldly since no guard wanted to visit the pest-infested room. God was good to you when he ultimately had you released from the camp because of a clerical error that prevented you from being killed like many others.
Through your story, I realized that God’s goodness in the midst of suffering comes from his sovereignty. God was greater than the guards and greater than the Nazis themselves. And yet, even though God controls everything, he allows suffering. You did have to grieve the deaths of your father and sister in the same concentration camps where you experienced God’s goodness.
But your words remind me that with every instance of God’s goodness, “I would know again that in darkness God’s truth shines most clear.” Your story highlighted to me that God doesn’t allow his people to ever face suffering empty-handed.
2. Responding to suffering with his strength
I was especially struck by your family members’ decisions as they stepped up according to their convictions. I saw how challenging it was to find the best way to fight injustice. You wrote, “This was evil’s hour: we could not run away from it. Perhaps only when human effort had done its best and failed, would God’s power alone be free to work.”
You continuously pointed out the ways that God works through human weakness. Every time you had to discern whether to trust someone or not, I was touched by how you would go to God and trust that his wisdom was far greater than your own. The skills to work in the resistance were what you called “loans” from God. He equipped you with the skills you needed when you needed them to live out your faith right where you were.
When I consider the many uncertainties of the future, I often fear being poorly equipped to pursue the dreams I pray about. Will I be able to do well in those particularly difficult classes? Will I be able to serve God in those ministries? Ultimately, will I be able to respond to difficulty and suffering well? Through your story, God encouraged me to see that he will equip me as necessary. He alone can and will be my strength.
One of my favorite analogies from The Hiding Place is the train ticket analogy. When you were young and worried about your family’s future (as I often do), your father reminded you that he would only let you hold your train ticket right before you got on the train. In the same way, God gives us our “train tickets,” our necessary moments of strength, right when we need them. In doing so, God connects our moments of relying on his strength to a greater work he is doing in us and through us.
3. Reconciling suffering with his story
History as God’s story ultimately highlights seemingly mismatched threads coming together in a beautiful tapestry. You were known to say, “Only heaven will reveal the top side of God’s tapestry.” As we live in the messy backside of the tapestry that God is creating, viewing suffering through the right lens is only possible when God himself is our hiding place.
Psalm 32 is one of my favorite psalms. It says:
“You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance.”
Psalm 32:7
You believed strongly that God’s love is unimaginably deep, and that inspired me to think of Him as my hiding place as well. I was inspired to take all my fears and questions to him during difficult times as I trusted that he was in control and would equip me as needed.
As my friends share stories from their own lives of fearing the future and the difficulties they are currently facing, I often find myself coming back to share your story. Even while trying to convey the hope of the gospel to others, I have found that your story truly does highlight so much of who the God I believe in is. Specifically, I love to share the story of you facing bombings during World War II.
One night, during the war, you woke up suddenly and decided to meet your sister, Betsie, downstairs for a cup of tea. After talking with Betsie, you returned to your room only to be frightened by a sharp piece of metal embedded right where your head would usually rest. If you hadn’t happened to have gone down, what would have happened?
When you shared your fears with Betsie, her words of reply are ones that I can never forget. “There are no ‘ifs’ in God’s world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of his will is our only safety.”
Betsie shared with you her trust in a God who is sovereign, caring, and always at work. This trust is what I hope to continue to cultivate when facing situations of all kinds. As a recent college graduate who is currently on a “gap year” or “growth year”, I find myself worried about the “ifs” in my life too. I have faced so much rejection just over the past few months after graduation and often worry about what God is actually doing. So, your story truly touches my heart to trust in the amazing tapestry God is creating.
I hope your story encourages other hearts who are similarly navigating this difficult world and yet are pursued by our loving and sovereign God. As your famous quote says, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”
Although I can never speak and dance with you on this side of heaven, your words and actions have truly touched my heart and life. As I share parts of your story to encourage others like me, I am so grateful that Christ was truly real to you, from your days with your heartwarming family to your days in concentration camps. May God continue to grow his people to rest in his dwelling place as he embroiders a beautiful tapestry in our lives!
Love,
Carissa