A Spring of Joy

I sing inside nearly all day long and we do have so much to be thankful for–an airy cell through which the sea wind blows, no more poverty since Attie’s parcel arrived with its good food, three Red Cross sandwiches, half a pan of porridge extra, and then that continuous communion with the Savior… I am continuously looking at Him and trying not to be impatient. I won’t be here one minute longer than God deems necessary. Pray for me that I can wait for His timing… Life’s dimensions here are very strange. Time is something to be waded through. I am surprised that I can adjust so well. To some things I shall never get accustomed, but on the whole I am really happy. Please never worry about me. Sometimes it may be dark, but the Saviour provides His light and how wonderful that is…” (~Corrie ten Boom, Prison Letters)

She wrote these lines from a prison cell in Germany. Her father and sister would go on to die in concentration camps. She would survive, but marred by the horrors of Scheveningen and Vught and others.

I have much to learn from the lives of other saints. So very much. I, who wrestle with God over days that don’t go my way, need the example of others to remind me of what true joy is.

Gratefulness in the every day isn’t being grateful for gratitude’s sake. Gratefulness in the every day isn’t being grateful so I will feel better. Gratefulness in the every day isn’t being grateful in order to fill up pages in a journal.

Gratefulness in the every day is an overflow, a pouring out of delight in Christ, the beauty of the Gospel and communion with Him, because all of this…this every day life? It’s full meaning is only understood when I view it through the lens of the Gospel, when I understand who I am and Whose I am. When I am grateful for Him is when I can be grateful for all things.

This fallen world is not my home, and too often I find my contentment hinges on the here, the now. I long for my contentment to be because of communion with our Savior and continuously looking to Him, for when I see Him, then the prison cells of my life can be a airy place with a beautiful sea breeze blowing through.

Corrie ten Boom wasn’t just “making the best of her situation”. She was leaning on the everlasting arms. Those arms stretched out to bear her sins on the Cross, they covered her with His righteousness, and they held her in that prison cell just as they did all of her life.

In the introduction to her letters, Corrie describes her arrest and imprisonment, and writes, “We did not know what was ahead of us, but I was certain of one thing–that Jesus would never leave us nor forsake us and that, for a child of God, no pit could be so deep, that Jesus is not deeper still.”

As I struggle with uncertainty in my life and in the life of so many wounded friends, this is what I cling to. He has numbered my days, and He knows them all. Tests results don’t shake Him. Disease doesn’t scare Him. Disaster doesn’t change Him. And as I look to Him and stand on that solid Rock, then I am unshaken, too.

Yes, some days are dark. Some are very dark.

But He always, ALWAYS brings light.