Too Ordinary To Serve God?
When we're fearful that we're not doing enough radical work for God like the heroes of the faith.
Do you ever read a biography of a Christian missionary or martyr and suddenly feel ashamed of just how ordinary and small your life is in comparison? Suddenly, you begin to question if your life is truly radical enough—perhaps your faith is lukewarm because you have never shown such crazy love and sacrifice for others.
I felt this after reading Corrie Ten Boom’s memoir.
Corrie Ten Boom was an ordinary woman living an ordinary life in Holland, working in her father’s ordinary watch shop. She spent her days doing bookkeeping and repairing broken watches with her father and sister, Betsie. She grew up in an ordinary home with an ordinary family. Yet in all of this, she looked back and saw as an older woman how God was preparing even her young heart for a very unordinary and difficult life ahead
In her book The Hiding Place, Corrie recounted her life and how God led her to hide Jews in her home from the Nazis during World War II. The turning point in Corrie’s story began when heard footsteps running into her room. The panicked Jews they had been hiding took cover in the secret room they had built within Corrie’s bedroom, just as they had practiced many times before. The authorities busted into her room and arrested her. The Nazis transported Corrie to a cold prison and eventually a concentration camp.
This memoir is more than a retelling of a sad and horrific story. It’s more than a story of mourning the tragic realities during World War II. This book is a true story dripping with hope and faith that could only be breathed into a person’s heart by God himself. It’s a story of learning to love—to lay down our lives for the needy and the hated alike. It’s a story of the gospel—not Corrie—overcoming the deepest, thorniest pit, and most wicked and vile of people.
After reading a book like Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place, we often feel a draping of guilt over our hearts. Why aren’t I doing great things like that for God? Why am I not serving others in such selfless and grand ways? Why aren’t I out spreading the love of the gospel through word and deed to the hurting, the homeless, and the hated? Am I living too ordinary of a life for God?
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