My daughter and I are in a local production of The Hiding Place, a play based on the life of Corrie Ten Boom.  Corrie and her family were followers of Christ who hid Jews from the Germans during World War II.  They were discovered, captured, and imprisoned. Only Corrie survived the camps.  To call it a powerful story is an understatement of the highest order.  This week I am taking a look at some of the lessons we can glean from this story.

“…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me (Matthew 25:40).

At one point before their arrest, the Ten Booms shelter a young Jewish mother and her newborn.  Desperate to find a more permanent hiding place for the tiny family, Corrie approaches a local pastor who has a large, secluded home.  The pastor, consumed with fear, refuses the baby.  “Definitely not!” he says.  “Why, we could lose our lives for that Jewish child!”  Casper, Corrie’s father, takes the baby in his arms.  “You say we could lose our lives for this child?  I would cosider that the greatest honor that could come to my family.”

As it happened, Casper and his daughter Betsie would die for that child and for the other Jews they had sheltered from evil hands.  I believe that he died without regret.

Beloved, what is your life worth?  Will you spend it on the least of those Christ loves?  You might be called to give it in one glorious, heroic gesture, as did Casper,

but  probably not.

More likely you will spend it little by little, quietly and unnoticed, changing lives without fully realizing it.  

Or will you hoard your life, clutching it to you as if by your own power you could maintain it?  As if life itself were the end, instead of the means.

That’s the funny thing.  In Christ, your life is not yours to keep; it is only yours to give.

“He who wishes to save his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Yeah, that.

Happy Thursday, Beloved.