Sabbath Devotional: The Key to Healing

Since I was a teenager, I have often been drawn to books about the Holocaust. I sometimes wonder why. What is it that draws me to these stories? The ones that resonate with me have messages of hope, love, and survival. I am inspired by human resilience.

Perhaps my very favorite is “The Hiding Place” by Corrie ten Boom, a memoir of a woman who was in her fifties when she, along with her sister and elderly father, began welcoming Jewish people to hide in their home. The ten Booms were devout Christians who lived with the faith and love of true disciples.

In time, Corrie, her sister, Betsie, and their father were arrested, although their Jewish friends managed to survive. The ten Booms were taken to concentration camps, where their father died almost immediately. Corrie and Betsie endured the harshest conditions imaginable at the hands of people who considered them sub-human.

During all of this, they maintained their humanity and their faith. They quietly taught and shared the love of Christ with other prisoners. Betsie spoke often of what they would do after the war. She wanted to open a house to help people heal from the effects of war. Corrie was surprised when she realized that Betsie wanted to help not only the prisoners, but the prison guards who were abusing them. She saw them all as damaged.

Betsie does not survive the war, but Corrie is released. She did her best to fulfill Betsie’s dreams by giving speeches to tell Betsie’s story of faith in Christ and love of others. She was even able to open a home for healing. Corrie spoke all over the world and she often spoke of the need to forgive others.

It is her message of forgiving that comes often to my mind. I want to share some passages from the final chapter of her book.

“And for all these people alike, the key to healing turned out to be the same. Each had a hurt he had to forgive.”

Friends, we are all hurting to varying degrees. And we see so much pain around us. I am captivated by the idea that the key to healing is not conquering an enemy but forgiving them.

“Strangely enough, it was not the Germans or the Japanese that people had most trouble forgiving; it was their fellow Dutchmen who had sided with the enemy.”

Most people struggled to forgive their former neighbors who had betrayed them. The hurt was too deep. They felt justified in this. But with time, healing would come. And with it, forgiving. As they spent time in the healing environment, Corrie would tell them of other people she knew who had been damaged. “As their horizons broadened, I would tell them about the people living in the Beje, people who never had a visitor, never a piece of mail. When mention of the NSBers [Dutch citizens with N*zi ideology] no longer brought on a volley of self-righteous wrath, I knew the person’s healing was not far away. And the day he said, “Those people you spoke of — I wonder if they’d care for some homegrown carrots,” then I knew the miracle had taken place.”

Isn’t that amazing? We talk about the miracle of forgiveness, and it is a miracle to be forgiven. But the miracle Corrie witnessed was the miracle to forgive.

This final story is exceptional to me:  

“I continued to speak . . . partly because the hunger for Betsie’s story seemed to increase with time. I traveled all over . . . but the place where the hunger was greatest was Germany. Germany was a land in ruins, cities of ashes and rubble, but more terrifying still, minds and hearts of ashes.”

It was at a church service in Munich that Corrie saw a former S.S. man who had been one of their jailers at Ravensbruck. His presence immediately triggered in her not just memories, but the reality of the pain she and her sister had suffered.

“He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. ‘How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,’ he said. ‘To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!’

“His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

“Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.

“I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.

“As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

“And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

Corrie, who knew the Bible very well, thought to convince herself first with logic: Christ had suffered and died for this man. Next, she asked for help so she could do what she knew was right. Finally, she asks for Jesus to do what she could not.

“When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

We are commanded to love and to forgive. We know that the “Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them” (1 Nephi 3:7).

And what is the way that He has prepared for us? “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He is the way. Jesus doesn’t just show us the way to love and to forgive, He is the way.

Our world is damaged. People are hurting. And we feel that. We are hurting and that manifests in anger, distress, and a desire to separate ourselves from those we think are betraying our once-shared values.

I believe in what Corrie experienced. The key to healing is choosing to forgive. Our covenantal relationship allows us to partner with Christ who will provide the way for us.

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Megan Rawlins Woods is the nonpartisan root senior director at Mormon Women for Ethical Government.