Much of our lives we can live in the illusion that we are strong enough to do it all, that everything we accomplish is through our own bodily strength, our own mental strength, our own strength of will.
And then something happens, something we discover that we can't handle alone. We are struck down by a life-threatening illness - or a loved one is. Or we're facing a difficult situation that seems insoluble. Or we lose a spouse to death or divorce. Or we lose a parent to dementia. Or we lose a house because of a natural disaster. Or a job.
Or we lose our country, as Corrie ten Boom did, in 1940, when the German Nazis took over her beloved Netherlands. Corrie and her family were devout Calvinists in the Dutch Reformed Church, used to caring for the needy. Her father had taught the family to have deep respect and love for the Jewish community in Amsterdam because they were God's ancient, beloved people. When the Nazis began a Jewish genocide, the entire ten Boom family joined the underground Dutch Resistance movement.
Corrie, a strong independent woman, was one of the leaders who oversaw a network of safe houses in Holland, which saved the lives of over 800 Jews. Her family's house had a secret room built behind her bedroom which held six refugees at a time until they could secretly move on. (You can visit the house in Amsterdam today.)
Betrayed by a fellow Dutchman, the family was arrested. The father died in one concentration camp; Corrie and her beloved sister Betsie were sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, where Betsie died a terrible lingering death. Yet she did not lose her faith. Before she died, she told a devastated Corrie to trust God and to forgive, because "there is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still."
After the war, Corrie began establishing post-war homes for other camp survivors trying to recover from the terrible cruelty they had endured. She even reached out to Dutch people who had collaborated with the Nazis. She traveled the world on speaking tours.
But Corrie fell into a pit of terrible testing herself when one day she came face to face with one of the Nazis who had tormented her.
She saw him in a Church in Munich, Germany, where she had just given a talk to the defeated Germans about how God forgives. He came toward her, and she immediately recognized him: he had been a guard at Ravensbruck. She says "It came back with a rush: the huge room with its overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!"
But this man approaching her now in the Church was telling her that he had become a Christian. He looked into her eyes and she realized that he did not remember her. Then he said something that had her mentally begging God for His help as she fell into a deep pit of helpless rage.
The former Nazi prison guard said "I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well, Fraulein.." His hand came out ..."Will you forgive me?"
Corrie says "And I stood there - I whose sins had every day to be forgiven - and could not. Betsie had died in that place - could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?"
The man stood there, hand outstretched for seconds; for Corrie it seemed hours as she wrestled with the most difficult thing she had ever had to do.
She prayed. She knew she had to forgive him. Jesus taught us to pray, saying that if we do not forgive others their trespasses against us, then God will not forgive our trespasses. Still she stood there, her heart ice cold, caught in that winter storm of anger.
But she knew that forgiveness is not an emotion. It is an act of the will.
She says that she prayed "Jesus, help me.... I can lift my hand, I can do that much. You supply the feeling."
God's answering grace was instantaneous.
"Woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did so, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. "I forgive you, brother!' I cried. "With all my heart!'... I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then." (from a Guideposts story.)
God's grace can reach us on a roof top that seems high as a mountain. God's grace can reach us in a pit so deep that we cannot struggle out of it. Because God's love reaches for us always - to the heights and the depths of all human experiences.
All we have to do is to admit to Him that we cannot do it alone. That we acknowledge our own human finiteness. That we are letting go of our Lone Ranger syndrome. We cannot, truthfully, ever do anything alone. We need our brothers and sisters. We need God. When we trust that He can do it - fill us with His abundant, life-changing, strengthening grace - He will.
"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor present things nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8: 38-39.)
You can read Corrie ten Boom's story in her famous book "The Hiding Place."