Tramp for the Lord

by Corrie ten Boom

  Many years later I was in a primitive house in Africa. The bathtub was made from an old oil drum that had been sawed in half. Missionaries lived there, and they invited me in to eat with them. Walking into the kitchen, I saw an African woman with the white missionary child strapped tightly to her back.

  “Hey, how nice she has your baby on her back,” I said to the missionary mother.

  The white mother smiled and said, “The baby was so fearful this morning. All she would do was cry. When the African cook came to the house, she took one look at the baby and said, ‘Ah, Missee, give me the baby. I will keep her quiet.’ So she strapped her on her back, and the baby has slept all morning while the cook has been busy around the kitchen.”

  I could understand that feeling of having a place—of belonging. I was often afraid as a small child. Sleeping beside my sister Nollie, who was a year and a half older than I was, I begged to be able to hold her hand at night. She refused, and instead gave me the hem of her nightgown. By and by she did not even like me holding on to that, but told me to hold on to the hem of my doll’s nightgown.

  Then, when I was five years old, the Lord Jesus became a great reality to me. My mother told me how He loved little children and was even willing to live in my heart if I asked Him in. I did, and a feeling of peace and security took the place of the fear I had so often felt. From then on I could go to sleep at night and not be afraid.

  As a child I prayed a nursery rhyme:

  Ik ga slapen, ik ben moe;

  ’k Sluit mijn oogjes beiden toe.

  Heere, houd ook deze nacht

  Weder over mij de wacht.

  (I’m going to sleep, I am tired;

  I close both my little eyes.

  Lord, watch over me again

  The whole night long.)

  In all these years that I have been a “tramp for the Lord,” I have often been afraid. But in those moments I have always reached up and touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. He has never failed to wrap me close to Him. Yet I still long for that time when I shall have a mansion in heaven.

  Here on earth, at the age of seventy-seven, for the first time I found a place of my own—a beautiful apartment in Baam, Holland. Even though I am seldom there (for I intend to keep on traveling until I die in harness), it is still a place to hang up my pictures on the walls and put the few sticks of furniture that I have saved from my days in the Beje. Yet even with this “home” here on earth, I still long most of all for my heavenly mansion.

  When I was a child, Tante Jans composed a children’s song. I remember two lines:

  ’k zou zoo graag eens komen, Heiland,

  In dat heerlijk Vaderhuis.

  (I should just like to come, Savior,

  In that beautiful Father-house.)

  As a child, however, I always got the words mixed up when I sang the song. Instead of singing, “to come,” I would sing “to peek.” The older people laughed at my mistake, but I thought they were very stupid. With all my heart I meant what I was singing. As a little child I did not want to go to heaven, I just wanted to peek for a moment.

  Now, though, that my days have grown long, I no longer sing as I did as a child. Now my greatest desire is to come for all eternity into the beautiful Father-house.

  Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice.

  1 Samuel 15:22

  14

  Obedience

  Obedience is easy when you know you are being guided by a God who never makes mistakes.

  Conny and I were in Africa, and one day during my Quiet Time, I began to feel that God was telling me it was time to leave Africa.

  “Lord, where do You want us to go?” I asked.

  “Argentina,” came the answer deep in my heart.

  Argentina? I had never been to Argentina. I could not speak a word of Spanish. In those days air travel was sometimes poor in Africa, and to fly across the Atlantic Ocean to Buenos Aires would be a trying ordeal. Yet as I sat before the Lord, the word Argentina became even stronger.

  “Yes, but … ,” I started to answer Him. Then I remembered that obedience never says, “Yes, but ….” Rather, it always says, “Yes, Lord!”

  Some months before, a missionary by the name of Breson had written me, asking if I would be willing to speak in his church if I ever came to Argentina. I did not know Breson very well, so I had not thought much about the invitation. Now, however, with God speaking to me so strongly, I sat down and wrote Mr. Breson a letter, asking if he could meet us in Buenos Aires and arrange some meetings for me to speak.

  We waited almost a month, but there was no answer. “Are you sure it is the Lord’s guidance for us to go to Argentina?” Conny asked. “Perhaps this man Breson no longer lives in Buenos Aires. What if we go and there is no one to meet us? Then what will we do?”

  I reached out and touched Conny’s hand. “Yes, I know it is God’s will for us to go to Argentina. Some years ago God spoke to me and told me to go to Japan. I had no money. I knew no one in Japan. I could not speak the language. Yet I knew God had led me. I finally saved up enough money to fly to Tokyo and stepped off the plane on a dark, rainy night in that strange land and said, ‘Lord, here I am. Now what?’ I remembered that David Morken was there with Youth for Christ. He found me a room, and because of my obedience God opened many doors of ministry. I was alone on that trip, but this time I have you. No, I know we should go to Argentina.”

  The plane flight was much longer than we expected. Connections were very bad, and we had to spend one whole day in a hot, dirty African airport awaiting a connecting flight that would take us on to West Africa for our flight across the ocean. It was almost midnight when we caught our last plane, and I could sense Conny’s anxiety. However, I was sure of God’s guidance.

  We finally arrived in the busy Buenos Aires airport. I looked out across the hundreds of hurrying people, hoping I might see Mr. Breson’s face. There was no one.

  Conny and I struggled with our luggage, and at the ticket desk a man asked us, in broken English, if he could send our bags to our address.

  “I do not yet know my address,” I said. Conny looked worried. I knew her thoughts: Do you know for sure it is Argentina where God would have you work?

  We were both exhausted from all-night plane rides, which had been added to the ordeal of waiting in all those African airports. We carried our suitcases to the curb, and I sat down. “See if you can find a taxi,” I said to Conny. “Perhaps there is a YMCA hotel nearby.”

  But there were no taxis. The air was heavy and hot. I finally asked a man, “Do you know where there is a YMCA hotel?”

  The man gave me a blank stare and moved on. I could speak Dutch, German and English, but none of those languages helped me here. We sat on our suitcases looking at the streams of traffic passing down the street.

  “Aunty, Tante Corrie, are you sure that God’s guidance brought us to Argentina?”

  I looked at Conny. Her face was dirty and creased with lines of exhaustion. I too was hot and tired and unhappy. But I was also sure of God’s leadership. “Yes,” I said wearily. “I am sure.”

  “I don’t like Argentine mosquitos,” Conny said, slapping her arm. “They are just as cruel as African mosquitos.”

  We looked at each other and laughed. Here we were in a strange country with a strange language. Holland was far, far away, yet we were laughing.

  Then I heard a man’s voice from the other side of the street shouting. “Bent u Corrie ten Boom?” (“Are you Corrie ten Boom?”)

  My name. My language. What joy! I could barely see the man on the far side of the streaming traffic, but he was waving his arms as he shouted.

  “Ja, dat ben ik,” I shouted back.

  The man had to wait for the traffic to thin before he could run across the street. Finally, after dodging cars, he stepped onto the curb. “I am Reverend Mees,” he said, extending his hand. “I did not think you would be here but felt I should come and check just the same.”

  “Do you know Mr.
Breson?” I asked. “I had hoped he would meet us.”

  “Did you not receive Breson’s letter?” Reverend Mees asked. There was a look of alarm on his face.

  “No, we heard nothing from him.”

  Reverend Mees put his hand on his forehead and looked toward the sky. “Oh, this is too bad. He wrote you a letter telling you not to come. He could not arrange any meetings and is now on a mission tour in the jungle. He will not be back for two months.”

  I sat back down on my suitcases, feeling even more tired than before.

  “Do you know if there is a YMCA hotel in the city?” I asked, as if this would solve all our problems.

  Reverend Mees smiled, “No, I do not know of a YMCA hotel, but a dear friend of mine, a woman doctor, knew about the possibility of your coming. She asked me to bring you to her hospital, and from there she will take you to her home. She has a spare bedroom and a little apartment where you can be very comfortable.”

  Dr. Gwen Shepherd received us graciously at the hospital. I knew at once that she was one of God’s precious children and therefore my sister also. She took us to her car, and for the first time I experienced what traffic in Buenos Aires is like.

  Traveling in the jungles of Africa was nothing to the streets of Buenos Aires. There were no traffic lights. At every intersection the cars came racing together, four abreast. Those who arrived first were the first ones through. I never saw an accident (but perhaps that was because I kept my eyes closed most of the time!). However, after bouncing and speeding down the streets, we finally reached her home where she provided wonderful hospitality.

  That night she invited a number of youth group leaders to her home, and I had an opportunity to share with them. The next day another invitation came for me to speak, and before long I was even busier than I had been any other place on the earth.

  Dr. Shepherd had a wonderful gift of administration and arranged much ministry for me. It was indeed God’s guidance for me to come to Argentina. What a joy I would have missed had I disobeyed.

  Perhaps the greatest joy of the entire trip, however, happened one afternoon in Dr. Shepherd’s hospital. I was allowed into a ward where polio patients were being treated. One room was filled with people in iron lungs. I had never seen the wheezing, gasping iron lungs before, and they scared me.

  “Do you wish to talk to some of the patients?” a kind nurse asked me.

  I looked around and said, “No, I think I am unable to talk. I just want to go off somewhere and cry.”

  Always when I say that I am not able, I get the same answer from the Lord. He says, “I know you can’t. I have known it already a long time. I am glad now you know it for yourself, for now you can let Me do it.”

  “All right, Lord, You do it,” I said. And surely the Lord did. I went from one iron lung to another telling the men and women about the Lord Jesus Christ who breathes into each one of us His Holy Spirit.

  Then I came to a man on a rocking bed. He had a different kind of polio; instead of being in a lung, he was on a bed that rocked up and down. When his head was up, he could breathe in. When his head went down, he breathed out. The nurse told me he was Jewish.

  “Ah,” I said, “I am happy to meet one of God’s chosen people. My old father, my dear sister and some others in my family died in concentration camps because we loved the Jews. I too was in prison for helping Jews. But tell me, do you know the Jew, Jesus, as your personal Messiah?”

  The bed rocked up and down, and he shook his head for he could not speak. He had a long tube in his nose and could only move one hand slightly to write tiny notes.

  “Then is it all right if I tell you about Him?” I asked.

  He picked up his stubby pencil and scribbled on a small note-book on the side of his moving bed. “I am ready to listen.”

  I stayed beside that rocking bed and told my Jewish friend about the great Messiah, the one whom the prophet called “Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:6).

  I finished speaking and from my bag took a small embroidery. On one side was stitched a beautiful crown. The other side was quite mixed up.

  “When I see you on this bed,” I said, “not speaking, not moving, I think of this embroidery.” I held up the back side of the embroidery. “Your life is like this. See how dark it is. See how the threads are knotted and tangled, mixed up. But when you turn it around then you can see that God is actually weaving a crown for your life. God has a plan for your life, and He is working it out in beauty.”

  He picked up his pencil and wrote again:

  Thanks God I am already seeing the beautiful side.

  What a miracle. He understood God did not want him to become a Gentile. Rather, he would become a completed Jew. I prayed and thanked the Lord with him. Then it was time to go, and Dr. Shepherd once again took me to her beautiful home.

  The next day I returned to the polio ward and asked the nurse if I could speak with my Jewish friend.

  “I am sorry,” she said, “but your Jewish friend on the rocking bed is no longer with us. Just five minutes after you left, he beckoned me to come to his side. There was a wonderful light shining in his eyes, and he wrote on a little paper: ‘For the first time I prayed in Jesus’ name.’ Then he closed his eyes and died.”

  “Then I am not sorry,” I answered. “I am glad. I know he has his own crown of life. Praise God.”

  God has a divine pattern for each of His children. Although the threads may seem knotted—as they did when we were sitting outside the airport in Buenos Aires—on the other side is a crown.

  For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

  Isaiah 55:8

  15

  The Real Corrie ten Boom

  While in Havana, Cuba, I was asked to speak at a youth rally in the Salvation Army hall. Of course this was before the Communist take-over, so there was still freedom to talk openly about the Lord Jesus Christ.

  It was a hot June night and the hall was small and stifling. The meeting was scheduled to begin at seven o’clock. But more and more groups continued to arrive from other parts of the city, so no one seemed to be in a hurry to start. As in most Latin American countries, everything was “Mañana, mañana”—even the church services.

  Finally, I was seated on the platform between two men with huge drums. One of them, an old Negro with white hair, tried to show his love for the Lord by vigorously beating one of the drums. The sound was almost unbearable. The captain had a very sharp voice and led the singing by shouting, waving his hands and pounding on the top of the pulpit. The young Cubans sang loudly with much clapping of hands and stomping of feet.

  By nine o’clock I was already worn out, and all I had done was sit and listen. There was a terrific ringing in my ears, and my head was splitting with a headache from the crashing sounds of the drums. Finally, though, I was called on to speak, and the hall grew silent. I was grateful for the few moments of peace.

  After I spoke the captain introduced a missionary who had brought his slides. The lights were turned out, and we all sat in the miserable heat while the missionary began his long slide presentation.

  Like many missionaries, he had been called upon to do some medical work in the field, so many of his slides dealt with that. He had photograph after photograph of drugs and medicines which had been given him by various doctors. “This particular bottle of pills was given me by Dr. Smith,” he droned on. Then flipping to his next slide he said, “And this box of medicines was sent me by Dr. Jones.”

  The young people in the hall were not the least bit interested in seeing these boxes, bottles and jars. The noise grew louder and louder, and finally reached such volume that the missionary had to shout to make himself heard. It was ten-thirty when he finally finished his presentation and the lights came back on.

  Now the room was filled with flying bugs, moths, insects and some kind of huge flying beetle, which buzzed around the exposed light b
ulbs and then dropped to the floor or in people’s laps. The young people were climbing over the backs of the benches, babies were asleep on the floor and everybody was sweating profusely. I did not think I could stand much more.

  Then the captain came to the front again and began to preach. A flying insect went in my ear and another was caught in my hair. I looked for some way to escape, but I was boxed in by the huge drums on either side. Finally, the captain gave an invitation for people to come forward and be saved.

  “Surely no one is in a mood to do anything but go home,” I said to myself. Then I thought, I hope nobody comes to the front. I long to get out of here and go to bed.

  Yet, to my great surprise, people began getting up from their seats and coming to the front. They were kneeling around the altar rail. Twenty of them. I saw tears in the eyes of some of the young Cubans and listened as the captain spoke with great persuasion, his voice full of love.

  A startling realization swept over me: I was selfish. I had hoped nobody would be saved because of my own weariness. My sleep was more important than the salvation of sinners. Oh, what a terrible egotist I was. Suddenly my bed was no longer important. I was willing to stay up all night if God was working.

  But what could I do with my guilty feeling for having been so selfish? I began to praise God, for I had learned what to do with my sin. I confessed it to the heavenly Father in Jesus’ name, and I claimed His forgiveness. With joy I was able to get up and pray with the twenty young people who had made the important decision to commit their lives to Jesus Christ.

  It was eleven-thirty when the meeting finally came to a close.