The Fourth Day of Christmas: His Love Fills Us

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I listened to a story on the way to work this morning. It was a story I’ve heard many times before, but it was good to hear again at this time of year.

Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch woman who was interned in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany after it was found that she and her family were helping an underground effort to conceal Jews from being arrested and sent to their deaths. Throughout her experience, she struggled to be as kind and forgiving as her sister Betsie, whose testimony of Jesus Christ and His saving power was inspiring, but her sister’s influence helped her to find forgiveness for herself.

Betsie ten Boom ended up dying before the end of the war and, in an effort to carry on her sister’s faith in the liberating power of forgiveness, Corrie began speaking publicly around the world about the peace and forgiveness she had found in Christ. The rest of the story I’ll quote from the general conference talk I heard the story from:

After the war she often spoke publicly of her experiences and of healing and forgiveness. On one occasion a former Nazi guard who had been part of Corrie’s own grievous confinement in Ravensbrück, Germany, approached her, rejoicing at her message of Christ’s forgiveness and love.
 “‘How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,’ he said. ‘To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!’
 “His hand was thrust out to shake mine,” Corrie recalled. “And I, who had preached so often … the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.
 “Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. … Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.
 “I tried to smile, [and] I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.
 “As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.
 “And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

So if you ever find it difficult to feel love for another person, or even for yourself, remember that Christ can give you that love. When you struggle to forgive another person, or even yourself, remember that Christ can give you His forgiveness. It is His light that fills this world and penetrates the darkness, and it is through His light and life that we can all be healed.