Published by When Corrie Ten Boom and her sister Betsie were confined to a concentration camp for the crime of helping Jews to escape the Nazis, they found that the bunk room was crawling with lice.
It was a completely discouraging situation and yet both women remembered what the Apostle Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
Corrie asked her sister how they could be thankful for the lice and Betsie told her nevertheless they should thank God.
Over the time they were in the camp, the women created a Bible study in their bunk room and a lot of women there came to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Many women found comfort in a horrible situation through the Bible study.
Yet, if the guards knew about the Bible study, assuredly, there would be trouble and maybe even death for Corrie and Betsie.
Later they found out that the guards refused to come in the bunk room at all. Why? Because of the lice.
One of the most common questions people ask is why bad things happen to good people-why God allows bad things. Why do babies die? Why do people get cancer? Why do wars happen? Why do people’s houses burn down or hurricanes destroy them?
And how on earth are we supposed to be thankful in these situations?
The first thing is that we must remember that God’s perspective is entirely different from ours. God’s perspective is eternal and He can look forward and backward in time.
Our perspective is temporal-we don’t live forever and we can’t see the future and yet our knowledge of mortality causes us to focus on time, because our time in this life is finite. We know only one thing about the future that is certain-we will die physically. It could happen in the next five seconds or it could happen decades from now. Even though we do not dwell on this fact, it does influence our perspective and it therefore influences our understanding.
Job had a temporal, human understanding. Everything he had was taken away and he suffered greatly. His friends suggested that he was suffering because he had sinned and yet he had been a devout man, offering sacrifices to God not only for sins that he knew were committed but sins his family might have committed. Even during his suffering, Job remained a devout believer in God. He was miserable, but he didn’t lose his faith.
Why did God allow Job to suffer so? The first part of the book reveals that Job was the focus of a battle between God and the devil. Did Job know this? His words make it abundantly clear that he did not. All he knew is that he was suffering and yet he had led a blameless life.
So what was the point of the suffering? It was to teach people across thousands of years some important lessons about God.
Being a Christian does not mean leading a life of constant happiness. Christians suffer just like anyone else. They have family members who die, they may live in abject poverty, they may be killed for their beliefs, they may be stuck in a bunk room that is full of lice.
From our perspective, these things are tragedies. And they are. They are painful and they may cut short our physical lives.
But God works great things through tragedy and the things He works are much greater than any individual’s life. This is part of having faith and it is also part of placing God ahead of selfishness, the way Job did.
God is in control. And what He works is much greater than we can imagine, in part because our perspective is so limited and His perspective is not.
A friend of mine was fired. At the time, it seemed a tragedy to her. She was afraid of not being able to get a new job and she was worried about money.
Yet her old job included a boss who was abusive. And the time when she was off work became a time when she drew closer to God.
In three months, she got a new job-and within a year she received two promotions in her new job.
This is a short example of something that feels awful, feels like a tragedy, being something that works out much better than expected. This example took about six months in order for the full blessing of God in the firing to be understood.
Some blessings of God take much longer-even generations-to understand. For thousands of years, we have been blessed by Job’s sacrifice.
Bad things happen for many many reasons and it may take a long time before we gain understanding about those things. The one thing to hang onto is the knowledge that God is in control and He can get us through.
What if you’ve been raped on a missionary field , got pregnant and now is HIV positive? How can you possibly extract anything good about it?
From a human perspective this is a huge tragedy and it is completely incomprehensible. It is enormously painful, not only for the victim of rape but also for everyone else around. The emotional pain of rape is made worse through the possible contracting of HIV.
I cannot tell you God’s perspective on this and it is very likely that this situation will not end as Corrie Ten Boom’s did, with the human knowledge of how the lice were good, although to put it in perspective, Corrie lost her sister Betsie in that concentration camp, so this was not a Pollyanna type situation where everything felt just fine once God’s purpose for the lice was discovered.
I do believe that we have to trust that God has the situation in hand. Also, for a believer, life can be painful but death is not something to be feared. In addition, believers go through life knowing that God is with them no matter what happens.
It boils down to this: believers trust God no matter what, even when life becomes painful beyond measure. Christianity is not about believing God when things are convenient and then leaving God when the going gets rough.
I really pray for all people who are dealing with this level of pain and I pray for their ability to trust God despite the horrors of life.
Thanks for the encouraging article.
Our human tendency is to look at the temporal perspective, and to dwell on things which upset us, usually leading to self pity and much complaining.
There’s so much blessing, temporal and especially the spiritual blessings we have in Christ, to be thankful for. It really depends where our focus is.
And through all the bad experiences we may have in this life, God’s grace will always be sufficient. “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)
God bless you in using your gift for His glory!
My goodness! You apparently know the mind of God and feel it necessary to write about it as if you are in communication with her. Nothing in your article makes sense. Please try to refrain from spreading these kind of ideas – our children get confused and without intervention could end up actually believing in this kind of thing. We are a gullible lot and your blind acceptance of these ancient stories exposes our weakness. Please try to think for yourself and, at least, keep these odd notions to yourself.
At Michael: You sound like the kind of person that has gone through a lot of pain. But I believe the only reply necessary is: freedom of speech. You have your liberal God bashing blog and we have a blog that tries to make some sense of our suffering that paves the way to a better place. At least that is what I pray will happen.
It saddens me when people not only see their glass as half empty but also feel the need to spit in other people’s glasses. Yet, people with faith still want to share their cups that overflowith. I’m an ex-athiest who used to have a spitting problem.