Amazing Women: Glorious God

Introduction

Good morning church and thank you for joining us today for worship.

Today is going to be a little different and I’ve been excited about it for a while because I’ve decided that we don’t get enough church history in the church. We get a lot of bible and bible stories and rightly we should but after the book of Acts the story of God’s people doesn’t end. The church took off in new and amazing ways and the word of the Lord spoke to the hearts of many amazing men and women over the years who have great stories to tell us and lessons to teach. While these stories don’t equate to scripture or ever seek to take it’s place God has teach us great lessons through their struggles and faithfulness, even today.

In honor of mother’s day and all the amazing mothers we all have had in our lives that pour into us and helped to make us who we are today we talk about Amazing Women: Glorious God.

Today I will be speaking over the life and legacy of a great woman of faith who started off in Haarlem, not New York, but in the Netherlands and was the youngest child of a jewler and watchmaker. Her given name was Cornelia Arnolda Johanna ten Boom but became famously known by her family nickname “Corrie”.

Netherlands and Harlem.

The Ten Boom family grew in the city of Harlem in the Netherlands. There Casper Ten Boom had opened a successful watch shop that he had ran for 60 years. He seemed to have a knack for speaking with the mechanics of watches and seeing the world through His dutch reformed church eyes, he had a patience that endured him greatly to the entire community. His beloved wife Cor was often going back and forth up the stairs from the watch shop to the family kitchen in back to make more coffee due to how many people in the community would stop by and start their mornings shooting the breeze with Casper or joining him for his morning Bible study. Looking at the middle of the family portrait you also see Aunt Jans and Aunt Anna both of whom moved into the home to be cared for in their failing health. Corrie would often remark that she never knew a time without them being their or in failing health.

Below you see Willem, Corrie, Nollie, and Betsie.

the watch shop and beye.

the family living arrangement was in a special house adjoined to the watch shop in a very normal Netherlands building that was very narrow and tall. However, when the aunts came to live with them the purchased the building behind that with an alley between the two. The issue is that the two building were built in different styles with ceilings in different heights. Father Casper closed up the alley way and put a spiral staircase adjoining the two houses. With such a confusing layout, everyone was able to be houses, if not in cramped quarters. But the ten booms never complained. in their estimation, God always provided them with what was needed for helping anyone in need.

the foiled marriage attempt

Growing up the family was everything. Church took place at home though morning and Evening bible readings and times when the entire town would gather around the workshop to sing an play music. The entire family played various instruments and sometimes the gatehrings would last well into the night.

William grew up to be the only one in the family to attend university and later seminary, where he became a reformed dutch pastor.

Corrie noted that while everyone would notice her quiet nature, shy demenor, and plain looks, everyone one of her classmates felt much the opposite of her sister Nollie. She remarked that giving a lock of your hair to an intersted boy was much the custom of the day. Corrie was never asked while Nollie was asked so often that she’d just cut some strands off of a family rug and send her to deliver it to the courters. Corrie remarked that eventually the rug was as bald as one of her fathers friends. After becoming a teacher she met and married her husband flip, and they had 4 children.

Betsie, Corrie’s older sister had pernicious anemia from the time she was a little girl. As such she was never able to marry or have children, so she stayed in the family home with Corrie and her parents first as the bookeeper for the shop but later found her knack in housekeeping, able to use her gifts to keep the family healthy and fed during times of rationing and scarcity.

Corrie grew up to think of herself as very plain and noticed early on that boys were not interested in her very much at all. However, when Willem went to university he met a friend named Karol who Corrie fell in love with almost immediately. The two hit it off and over the course of 5 years of aquantence and friendship, Corrie knew that she would never love another man in all her life. However, when Karol showed up to the beye one day with his new fiance, Corrie’s heart was shattered. Karol was of a family that had meant from his early days to marry well off, and while his affection for Corrie was real, his duty to his family would never be ignored. This dashed Corrie’s hopes of every finding another and one day while asking God to help her pray for Karol and his new bride sincerely to be happy, she asked the Lord to give her a new avenue for her love to flow into.

Taking care of youth and mental handicapped

As such Corrie took a number from both her father and her mother. She developed a taste for the buisiness side of the watchshop helping her father turn a profit by keeping leders and actually collect pay for the projects. And under her care the shop became profitable for the first time in a long time. She later went on to learn the trade of watch care, becoming the first and only licensed woman clock smith in the Netherlands.

From her mother she learned the love of caring for those who needed help. She would often say that mother’s method of loving those that God gave her was through her stove and her sewing basket. Even when she was rendered basically speachless by a stoke later on in life she was able to relay messages through corrie and Betsie to make sure people got porridge when they had a baby or to send a card for their birthday. The poor were always welcomed at the Ten boom home and that same heart was poured into Corrie and Betsie.

Corrie organized youth clubs and taught sunday school as well as bible classes in the local schools. She organized a Sunday afternoon church service specifically for children with learning disabilities and always had a heart for them and their families.

Their family fostered many children through the years because God had blessed them with the room and they wanted to make sure they used it for his glory.

However, while life seemed to be staying larely unassuming in the netherlands, the rest of Europe was swimming with anticipation about the looming storm that was coming.

One night the family gathered around the radio to hear the prime minister tell them that war was not coming to the Netherlands and both sides had agreed to their neutrality. The very next night they had been awoken by the sound of bomb shells raining down on the local airport and new that the queen had left the country. Germany was invading and they held out against the invaders for only 5 days.

German invasion of Netherlands

During those days people came by the shop to meet with Father Casper for prayer and opinions and the radio which was the only source of news. One night Corrie herd some noise and went down the stairs to find a betsy making tea. She heard some explosions and upon going back to bed cut her hand on a 10” piece of shrapnel that had embedded herself in the pillow she’d previously laid her head on.

Corrie spoke about the invasion not being so noticeable at first, just an influx of German uniforms and german being spoken everywhere. At the shop they had never been busier and with no new stock allowed to come in, all of their stock was bought up by excited german soldiers sending home watches to mothers and wives with their new paychecks.

Yet later they instituted identification cards for all citizens. Then the police department was to report to german command. Ration cards were handed out and the anti-antisemitism started but slowly.

First it would be rock through a Jewish owned storefront or insults on a synagogue wall. But it grew and Nazism and and semitism grew well in Holland. Eventually signs started popping up around town. “jews will not be served”, “no Jews allowed”.A synagogue burned down and the fire truck came, but not to save it. Only to keep the adjacent buildings from catching on fire. One day they came through the streets to find them littered with Neighbors who now wore clothing with the 6 pointed yellow star that said “Jew”.

Then came the disappearances. You’d have a watch hanging up in the shop, finished from the repairs only to stay hanging for months. Friends and neighbors would just go missing and you wouldn’t see them anymore. Then you’d see Hollanders sympathetic to Nazi’s taking up their homes. One day in the market they saw a truck loading up full of people with the yellow stars being loaded like cattle and then carted off and away, never to be seen again.

During this season of unrest, one of the shop-owners adjacent to the beye, a mr. viles, was awoken to 4 german soldiers to rushed in to his shop at gunpoint and threw him into the alley. They went back in searching for something and throwing his possesions out of the second floor window and there stood Mr. Viles, bewildered and scared. Corrie, overcome with a desire to do something grabbed him and wisked him into their home before they could come back. They learned his wife was visting family in amsterdam. Because home phones were closed early in the occupation and all public lines were german monitored, Corrie elected to travel to Amsterdam to tell her Brother William what had happened. His son Kik told them to have Mr. Viles ready that evening and they would move them both. Kik arrived to knock on the door at 9 around the german curfew to take Mr. Viles away.

2 weeks later Corrie asked whatever happened with Mr. Viles. Her nephew Kik smiled and told her that if she was going to keep working with the underground, she would have to learn to not ask so many questions.

this lived rent free in Corrie’s head for days. How did I join the underground. The idea felt too political and it was illegal. It felt wrong and made Corrie reflect on what a Christian's role is when evil is in power.

Hiding Jews and the hiding place.

soon the ten booms in league with William in Amsterdam were helping various Jews get counterfit papers and having them stay at their home until they could get moved. Father was 80 and Corrie just over 50 at the time would open their door to anyone.

Soon their underground railroad was getting harder and harder to keep hidden. There were places to send them but they would require ration cards. Jews weren’t given ration cards. So Corrie went to an old family friend to try and get some. There to ask for 3, she meant to ask for 5 and instead 100 came out of her mouth. To her great suprise, the man staged a robbery and when she visited him the next week there were her 100 cards. Passports for these people to freedom.

After sometime members of the underground helped the Ten Booms change the layout of Corries room to install a secret hiding place. so that if they were ever raided, the jews in the house could go in there. They would do drills with everyone in the house. They would have to have everything they owned but the clothes on their backs in the room. They would have to reset the table so it only looked like 3 people were eating. they’d have to grab every evidence that they were there and crawl through the little trap door hidden in Corrie’s closet. And they would have to do all this in less than one minute. Alarms were positioned around the house that could be bumped and the unique structure of the two homes with a staircase would be of benefit, as it took a little bit of know-how to navigate correctly.

Jan Vogel turning them in

Going to jail, dad, Betsy, corrie

Dad dying.

Solitary

Ravensbruck

700/200 bunkhouse

Daily bible studies

Betsy’s vision and death.

Getting out before the culling

Going back home.

The house in the Netherlands

The concentration camp village

The world travels and speaking engagements

Forgiveness.

the man who betrayed her and forgiveness in prison.

The prison guard who came to hear her speak.

Tension

Truth

Landing

Baby Dedication