This Thursday will be one of my favorite holidays,Thanksgiving! I love Thanksgiving because it gives me the opportunity to take a step back and think about everything in life that I can be thankful for. If you are like me at all, you would probably start off by thinking you are thankful for your friends, family, school, church, house, food, water, shelter and clothing. These are all amazing things to be thankful for, but then I had this thought, what if everything I just listed was taken away from me? What would I have left? Could I find anything in my life to be thankful for?
There is this woman who I look up to immensely because of her attitude, her willingness to do God’s will, her forgiving spirit, and her thankfulness in every situation. Her name is Corrie Ten Boom. I won’t fill you in on her whole story, but what I do want to talk about from her life is one of the hardest things she went through. She was a Christian, who with the help of her family, hid Jews from the Nazi’s during WWII. Her family was eventually caught by the Nazis, and they were sent to a concentration camp. Her and her sister, Betsy, were put into a room that was infested with flees. Can you even imagine how awful that would be! Corrie’s sister told her that even in the midst of this incredibly hard situation, they could still be thankful. So the two of them thanked God for the flees. They found out later on that it was because of the flees that they were able to freely share the Word of God with the other prisoners. The Nazi soldiers didn’t want to go into their room because it was infested with flees. So God had a plan, even with the flees.
After hearing this story about Corrie and her sister thanking God for the flees, I examined my own life even more. I needed to remember that even when it feels like nothing is going my way, that God still has a plan, and can use anything in my life, even flees. I just need to take a step back and be thankful for everything. Have you been thankful lately? Would you have been able to thank God for the flees? How can you change your perspective on thankfulness this Thanksgiving?
For more information on Corrie Ten Boom and her story, check out some of these awesome resources!
Book: The Hiding Place: Corrie Ten Boom
https://www.biography.com/people/corrie-ten-bo
om-21358155
