Tramp for the Lord by Corrie Ten Boom

Author:Corrie Ten Boom
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Biography, History
ISBN: 9780515089936
Publisher: Jove
Published: 1974-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom.

Isaiah 40:11

13

A Place to Be

Everyone needs a place to be. One of the great joys of heaven is that it is a place, a prepared place. I am thankful that there I will have a special house that is reserved just for me.

When I was born, Father and Mother were living on the Korte Prinsegracht, a typical Amsterdam canal. I was born prematurely and my skin was blue. Uncle Hendrik, Tante Jans’s husband, looked at me and exclaimed, “I hope the Lord will quickly take this poor little creature to His home in heaven.”

But my parents and Tante Anna did not agree with him. They surrounded me with love and care. However, since there were no incubators in those early days, I cried much from the cold. Tante Anna, knowing I missed the warmth of the special place under my mother’s heart from which I had come, rolled me in her apron and tied me against her stomach. There I was warm and quiet.

Many years later I was in a primitive house in Africa. The bathtub was made from an old oil drum that had been sawed in half. Missionaries lived there, and they invited me in to eat with them. Walking into the kitchen, I saw an African woman with the white missionary child strapped tightly to her back.

“Hey, how nice she has your baby on her back,” I said to the missionary mother.

The white mother smiled and said, “The baby was so fearful this morning. All she would do was cry. When the African cook came to the house, she took one look at the baby and said, ‘Ah, Missee, give me the baby. I will keep her quiet.’ So she strapped her on her back, and the baby has slept all morning while the cook has been busy around the kitchen.”

I could understand that feeling of having a place—of belonging. I was often afraid as a small child. Sleeping beside my sister Nollie, who was a year and a half older than I was, I begged to be able to hold her hand at night. She refused, and instead gave me the hem of her nightgown. By and by she did not even like me holding on to that, but told me to hold on to the hem of my doll’s nightgown.

Then, when I was five years old, the Lord Jesus became a great reality to me. My mother told me how He loved little children and was even willing to live in my heart if I asked Him in. I did, and a feeling of peace and security took the place of the fear I had so often felt. From then on I could go to sleep at night and not be afraid.

As a child I prayed a nursery rhyme:

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