The Five Silent Years of Corrie ten Boom

My friend Jennie recommended The Five Silent Years of Corrie ten Boom to me earlier this spring when we went on a double date. She and I often share book suggestions with each other.  She said there was nothing suspenseful about this book, yet she could hardly put it down.  I found the same to be true!  It was such a joy and encouragement to read about Corrie's continual faithfulness to the Lord in a hard circumstance.  I was also touched by her caretakers' deep love and service to Corrie and, ultimately, the Lord.  

I wanted to save some of my favorite quotes/sections from the book to help me remember the truths of this book.

"It is not so much what happens, but how we take it, that is important," Tante Corrie had often told me.  Through the hard circumstances of the last years of her life, the Lord had shown me a paradox: The deepest fellowship with Him lies not in resisting when suffering comes our way, but in going through it resolutely with Him.

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(A favorite quote of Corrie's and displayed in her California home.): My times are in Your hands. 

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In all the weakness, illness, and confusion, Tante Corrie retained her essential inner peace and never did those of us around her detect rebellion against God.   It was not what we never saw her weep.  We did.  We also saw moments of frustration and an emotional debility so common in stroke patients.  For example, sometimes, for no apparent reason, Tante Corrie began to cry.  At first I found this upsetting until I realized that it was part of the illness and had to be dealt with as such.  

"Tante Corrie, what is the matter?"

A shaking of her head and a trembling of her thin shoulders.

"Are you in pain?"

"No."

"Are you weeping because everything is so difficult?"

"Ja!"

"Let's go to the Lord with it, Tante Corrie."

"Ja." She closed her eyes.

"Father, You know how Tante Corrie is feeling and how difficult this situation is for her.  Will You send the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, now at this minute to bring help to her and to restore her joy? If there is anything we need to know in order to help her, will You show us?  Thank You, Lord, in Jesus' name, Amen."

We opened our eyes.  She had stopped weeping and held out her hand for a tissue.  Blowing her nose firmly as if to say, "It is over," she was quiet and at peace again.  She was not immune to the emotional instability that all stroke patients have to bear, but in her times of distress her relationship with the Lord Jesus was very real, and He sustained her.

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In what way was she fulfilling God's will now?  I asked myself, but even as I asked the question I could see part of the answer.

There had been a tremendous change in her way of life, one that could crush the spirit -- but that had not happened.  She was living for God.  I could see no difference in the attitude of this weak and silent Tante Corrie to that of the strong speaker whom I had joined nearly three years earlier.  She served Him then; she was serving Him now.  Her attitude said to me, "Since this suffering has come my way I will go through it with the Lord with the same resolution I needed when I was well."

She had served Him in her youth; now she was serving Him in her old age.  She had served Him in strength, now she was serving Him in weakness. She had served Him in health; now she was serving Him in illness.  She had served Him in her life; she was serving Him in her death.  We saw how God built her up in her spirit daily, did not forsake her, provided for her and sustained her.  A new awe and respect for the preciousness of human life came into our thinking.  God had made mankind in His own image.  He had made Corrie ten Boom in His own image.  Whether young, old, strong, weak, well, ill, she was equally precious in His sight.  His view of her had not changed although in the eyes of an achievement-oriented society she may have lost her usefulness.

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   ...connection between Ezekiel and Tante Corrie, but noted that the response of the prophet and the response of God's twentieth-century servant were the same--obedience, not rebellion.  Ezekiel had a message to proclaim and he proclaimed it.  We were equally sure that Tante Corrie had a message to proclaim and was proclaiming it, yet without words.  Her very attitude was proclaiming, "when the very worst happens, the Lord Jesus remains the same."  Her life was saying that if she could be joyful and peaceful in her circumstances, other people surely could be in their easier ones, provided they too had a relationship with the Lord Jesus.

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When the very worst happens in the life of a child of God -- and it did -- the best remains, the best remains, and the very best is yet to be," Tante Corrie began.  From her bag, she slipped out a piece of cloth.  I recognized it as the shiny blue cloth I had mistaken for embroidery.  She held it up backward, so we were staring at the tangled, knotted, yellow thread of the wrong side.  The lady in pink, who was sitting very near to Tante Corrie, leaned forward to help her turn it to what she thought was the correct side.  Tante Corrie, smiling at her, lifted the cloth a little higher so that it was out of her reach and said:

"My life is like a wearing

between my God and me

I do not choose the colors

He worketh steadily

Sometimes He wealth sorrow

and I in foolish pride

Forget He sees the upper

and I the underside"

As she spoke the last two lines, Tante Corrie turned the cloth around so that instead of tangled threads, we saw a golden crown.  And she continued:

"Not 'till the loom is silent

and the shuttles cease to fly

will God unroll the canvas

and explain the reason why

the dark threads are as needful

in the skillful Weaver's hand

as the threads of gold and silver

in the pattern He has planned." 

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