Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

But Samuel replied:
“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
    as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
    and to heed is better than the fat of rams.

• 1 Samuel 15:22

I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever;
    with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known
    through all generations.
I will declare that your love stands firm forever,
    that you have established your faithfulness in heaven itself.

• Psalm 89:1-2

He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

• John 1:7-8

My wife was born in Indonesia, but her father was Dutch and when the rebellion was lost by the Dutch, my wife’s family was given a choice.  They could swear allegiance to Indonesia, the new government, and its religion.  They could get on a ship bound for Holland.  Or they could die.  They got on the ship.  When they arrived in the Netherlands, the family went into a camp that concentrated the refugees, until a relative could be found to vouch for them.  Note: I did not say concentration camp.  My wife did not endure the same suffering as Corrie ten Boom.  An aunt, one of my father-in-law’s sisters, found out that they were there, and in a typical Dutch manner, she gave the people in charge of the camp an earful, but the Dutch government feared rebels sneaking in with the refugees and continuing the rebellion on the home front.  A year later my wife’s family came to the United States.

We met roughly eighteen years later.  She often spoke of Corrie ten Boom.

Being a dumb American, I kept getting two World War II female figures mixed up: Corrie ten Boom and Anne Frank.

Here are the differences.  Anne Frank was a Jew.  Corrie ten Boom and her family helped as many Jews as possible to escape the Holocaust.  Anne Frank was born in Germany and moved to the Netherlands to avoid Nazi persecution.  Tante (Aunt) Corrie was born in the Netherlands.  Anne Frank wrote a diary about her time hiding in a hiding place (in Amsterdam, Netherlands) until she was captured.  Tante Corrie wrote a book called The Hiding Place where they kept Jews until they could be moved (the place being in Haarlem, Netherlands).  Anne Frank was 15 when she died in a concentration camp.  Tante Corrie, turning fifty years old while imprisoned, survived the concentration camp, and became a world traveler, telling people about Jesus.  And that is where my recent book that I read comes into play, Tramp for the Lord.

Similarities between the two, although everything above seems similar, is that they were both captured and both lost a sister in the concentration camp, Anne Frank dying near the same time as her sister in Bergen-Belsen, while Tante Corrie’s sister died in Ravensbruck.  Tante Corrie’s father contracted tuberculosis and died soon after being released.

With her sister, Betsie, dying, basically in her arms, Tante Corrie swore that she would become a preacher of sorts.

Tramp for the Lord talks about her world travels.  She would be guided, specifically, from place to place by the Holy Spirit, although many today says that just does not happen.  Whether it did or not, she often got resistance, like her first trip to the USA, even after her first book was selling well in Europe.

The book reminded me of Answers to Prayer by George Muller, who ran an orphanage in England.  He prayed and then his prayers were answered.  It was the same with Tante Corrie.  Sometimes with only a few dollars in her pocket (or the country’s equivalent), she held her suitcase in one hand and her Bible in the other.  George Muller never failed in feeding and clothing the orphans, but I was more impressed by Corrie ten Boom.  By the way, “ten Boom” is translated into English as “to the Tree.”

Tante Corrie stayed at YMCA hotels when possible.  When she arrived in one country, she asked someone where the YMCA hotel was.  She was told that they had none of those, but if she was the lady who was to talk to the church, they had a room for her – a real bedroom in a real house.  She had slept outside between door jams in the past.  She was awed by the luxury.

I wrote recently about being called a religious kook.  I could have mentioned Corrie ten Boom, but she lived the Christian life, in many ways as Christ had done, without a place to lay her head.

The book is a short one, my copy less than 200 pages, but it is divided into 35 chapters.  Each a disjointed (for the most part) series of remembrances.  Each of those 35 stories brought me to tears.  Was it that this was a fellow Dutch girl like my late wife?  Was it that I discovered the book after my wife passed, and she could not now read it?  (Forget that though, she probably has lunch with Tante Corrie once a week.)  Or was it that when Tante Corrie was at the point of despair, asking God why she had been sent to this country or that country, someone fell into her lap, and she told them about Jesus, and they accepted Jesus on the spot?  Or was it those many conversions to Christianity, and I could hear the angels singing each time?

I bought the book because I had read The Hiding Place and I wondered what was next.  I bought the book because my wife was like Corrie ten Boom, a little Dutch girl.  But I got a cure for chronic dry eye.  I will get into this book when I have an opening for a mini-series.  One of the chapters was a confession of hers, the one with John 1:7 as the leading Scripture.  A man confessed to her that he was not walking in the Light, and as she witnessed to him, she realized that she had lost that fire from within and for a time was going through the motions (leading people to Jesus left and right, but she felt she could be closer to the Lord).  That chapter hit me like a ton of bricks.  I have had some stern opposition lately and I was wondering if I was simply too old for all this, the writing maybe not but the carrying the Bible in one hand thing.  I just needed to get back on my feet and walk in the Light.

Stay tuned, but the Costly Grace series with Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Sunday afternoons (timing for the USA but available if you scroll or search this site for Costly Grace) is getting near the end.  I may need a little break from the book.  You know, so my eyes can dry out a little bit.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.