Their Watch

By the world's standards, they were old maids. Never left home. Worked in the family business. One was rejected by the man she loved, losing out to a rival. The other was in such frail health that she gave up any hopes of becoming a wife and mother, the highest aspirations for women of that era.

Yet history will never forget the courage and sacrifice of these two "unwanted" women.

Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie lived quiet lives in Holland while Hitler waged war in Europe. They contented themselves assisting their elderly father in running his watch shop: Corrie found she had a knack for working with time pieces; Betsie was better suited for keeping the home fires burning.

Then came the day they had to face what was happening around them. Hitler's henchmen were rounding up Jews in an effort to exterminate the entire race. The three watchmakers, along with extended family, embraced the role of "underground" workers, making their home a way station for Jews being relocated to safety. They created a secret room - a hiding place for their "tenants" in the event of a Gestapo raid.

When betrayal occurred, all four of the Jews hidden in that tiny space survived, while an equal number of the ten Boom family lost their lives as a direct result of their rescue efforts and subsequent capture by the Nazis. The ten Boom Museum in Haarlem, Holland, where the family took in Jewish refugees, estimates that as many as 800 Jews were saved through the ten Boom family's courageous actions.

According to societal norms of the time, Corrie and Betsie did not measure up. They stood on the sidelines as their siblings entered into marriage and parenthood. Surely they longed for the embrace of a husband and the blessings of offspring; yet these joys were denied them by a Bridegroom who, centuries before, had promised countless children to a childless man named Abram/Abraham, and would later entrust hundreds of those children into the care of these spinsters. During their watch, they would follow their Bridegroom into an earthly hell while protecting His chosen children. They willingly laid their lives and prospects for worldly happiness onto an eternal altar, only to take up gifts greater than any temporal happiness could afford.

My prayer is to be just as faithful - and content - with whatever life situation He ordains for me.

"Though the fig tree may not blossom,

Nor fruit be on the vines;

Though the labor of the olive may fail,

And the fields yield no food;

Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,

And there be no herd in the stalls—

18 

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will joy in the God of my salvation."

Habakkuk 3:17-18