The Watchmaker's Prayer That Began Decades Too Early

In 1844, Casper ten Boom began a weekly prayer meeting in his Haarlem watch shop, interceding for the Jewish people. His neighbors thought it eccentric. There was no crisis, no persecution on the horizon — just a Dutch watchmaker who felt compelled to love a people not his own.

For nearly a hundred years, the ten Boom family continued that prayer tradition. They celebrated Shabbat alongside Jewish friends and welcomed rabbis into their home. Casper's granddaughter Corrie grew up steeped in this unexplainable affection for Israel.

Then came 1940. The Nazis invaded the Netherlands, and the ten Boom home — already known and trusted in the Jewish community — became a hiding place. A secret room was built behind Corrie's bedroom wall. Over the next four years, that watch shop at 19 Barteljorisstraat sheltered roughly 800 Jews from the Holocaust.

What looked like an old man's peculiar devotion turned out to be a century of divine preparation.

Paul writes that God "chose us in Him before the foundation of the world" and "predestined us for adoption" according to the purpose of His will. The ten Booms discovered what every believer eventually learns: God does not improvise. The calling you feel stirring today — the compassion that seems premature, the burden that makes no earthly sense — may be evidence that the Father claimed you for a purpose He set in motion long before you drew breath. You were chosen not as an afterthought, but to the praise of His glory.