Refuge Among the Fleas of Ravensbrück

In the winter of 1944, Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsey were transferred to Barracks 28 at Ravensbrück concentration camp. The straw bedding crawled with fleas. The stench was unbearable. Women were packed so tightly they slept in shifts. Corrie recoiled in despair.

But Betsey opened their smuggled Bible to 1 Thessalonians and read aloud: "Give thanks in all circumstances." Then she prayed, thanking God for the fleas.

Corrie refused. Fleas? Thanking God for fleas?

Yet something remarkable happened. The guards would not enter Barracks 28. The infestation kept them away. And in that neglected, vermin-infested space, Corrie and Betsey held open Bible studies night after night. Women from every nationality gathered to hear Scripture read aloud. The barracks became, against all reason, a sanctuary.

God had turned their misery into a hiding place.

Nahum 1:7 declares, "The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him." Corrie ten Boom discovered this was no metaphor. In the darkest chapter of the twentieth century, God did not remove the trouble — He entered it. He fashioned refuge out of the very thing that seemed most hopeless. The goodness of God does not always look like deliverance from suffering. Sometimes it looks like a presence so near that even a flea-infested barracks becomes holy ground.