The Hand She Never Expected to Hold

In 1947, Corrie ten Boom stood in a church basement in Munich, having just spoken about God's forgiveness to a crowd of defeated, hollow-eyed Germans. Then she saw him — a man in a gray overcoat pushing through the crowd toward her, hand extended. She recognized him instantly. He had been a guard at Ravensbrück, the concentration camp where her sister Betsie had died in her arms just three years earlier.

"You mentioned Ravensbrück," he said. "I was a guard there. But since then, I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me, but I would like to hear it from you as well." His hand hung in the air between them.

Corrie froze. Every memory of that place — the humiliation, the cold, the death — surged through her body. She had preached forgiveness. Now the Almighty was asking her to live it.

She later wrote that she stood there for what felt like hours. Then she prayed silently, thrust her hand into his, and felt a warmth she described as almost electric pass from her shoulder down her arm and into their clasped hands. "I forgive you, brother," she whispered. "With all my heart."

This is the new thing Isaiah 43 speaks of — God making streams in the wasteland of our deepest wounds. The Lord who once parted the Red Sea was not finished. "See, I am doing a new thing!" He declared. "Do you not perceive it?" Corrie perceived it in a handshake she never could have managed alone.