01/08/2025
🌿 Corrie ten Boom: The Woman Who Forgave the Unforgivable
Corrie ten Boom wasn’t a soldier or a rebel. She was a watchmaker in the Netherlands; quiet, faithful, and deeply committed to her Christian faith.
When the N***s invaded her country during World War II, Corrie and her family made a dangerous choice: they began hiding Jews in a secret room built behind a wall in their home. Their house became a refuge, and dozens of lives were saved because of their courage.
But in 1944, they were betrayed.
Corrie, her sister Betsie, and their father were arrested. Their father died ten days later. Corrie and Betsie were eventually sent to Ravensbrück, a brutal women’s concentration camp in Germany.
There, they faced starvation, freezing temperatures, hard labor, and daily cruelty. Their barracks were infested with fleas. But miraculously, the guards never entered their section. That gave Corrie and Betsie the freedom to read the Bible they had smuggled in, pray with other prisoners, and speak about the love of Christ.
Betsie’s health worsened quickly, and she eventually died in the camp. But before she did, she whispered to Corrie:
“There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.”
Just days later, Corrie was released. It was later discovered that her release had been a clerical error, a mistake. The following week, all the women her age were sent to the gas chambers.
Corrie would say for the rest of her life,
“God doesn’t have problems. Only plans.”
After the war, she returned to the Netherlands. But instead of living in bitterness, Corrie opened a home for former N**i collaborators and concentration camp survivors. She welcomed both victims and former enemies, helping them heal.
She traveled the world sharing her testimony, preaching forgiveness, and reminding people that God’s love is bigger than hate, pain, or death.
One day, she met a former Ravensbrück guard, a man who had caused her and Betsie great pain. He asked her for forgiveness. At first, she couldn’t do it. But with God’s help, she reached out her hand and said, “I forgive you, brother.”
In that moment, she later wrote,
“I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.”
Corrie ten Boom died in 1983 on her 91st birthday, the same day she was born, a quiet sign of God’s poetic timing.
Her story reminds us:
âś… That faith can endure anything.
âś… That forgiveness is possible, even when it seems impossible.
âś… That God can use even the darkest moments to shine the brightest light.
⸻
✨ “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope.” — Jeremiah 29:11
