As I stand outside the Schaeffer home on this brisk March morning in the Netherlands, my ears are filled with the syncopated chirping of countless unfamiliar bird species native to the lowlands near the North Sea. Large birds and small call from varying distances; others chatter close at hand, darting through the tall branches and the canopy overhead. Beneath it all, I catch the unmistakable cry of domestic peacocks—instantly familiar from the gorgeous scoundrels I raised as a boy.
I am mindful that Randy and Kim have not only graciously hosted us in their modest home, but—far more—have blessed us beyond words through the love, care, friendship, and ministry they have lavished on the believers in this region, building bridges across which much help and grace now flow.
The sun filters through dew-wet leaves, refracting in silver and gold. The light is clean, angled, northern—glorious in a restrained way that suits this country. There is much to love about the Netherlands: the kindness of the people, their frank manner, the small towns with cobblestone streets, the occasional towering windmills rising out of flat pastureland, the endless crisscrossing canals, the neat geometry of verdant farmland, and the distinctive Dutch architecture, where even newer homes sometimes wear thatched roofs that feel centuries old.
There are other things I appreciate as well. In many of the smaller towns, people seem less immersed in technology than what we often see in America—somehow a bit more present, more outdoors, more in motion. More people ride bicycles here than anywhere else in the world, and you see it constantly: teenagers on bikes, elderly couples on bikes. Last night we passed a middle-aged couple riding side by side, holding hands as they pedaled quietly down a designated bike lane.
On Sundays, you may still see families strolling together through town squares or moving slowly along canal paths on bicycles. Even subtle linguistic customs signal honor—small shifts in address that a foreigner might never notice: elders spoken to differently than peers; forms of speech that subtly preserve respect. These things can, of course, become hollow forms. Yet they remain cultural markers I appreciate in a Western world that has so systematically dismantled habits of honor and restraint.
The House on Barteljorisstraat
Earlier this week, Rebekah and I drove with Brother Howard and Judah in our rented Ford Focus hatchback about an hour and a half west and north from where we’re staying, heading toward Haarlem—an old North Holland city just west of Amsterdam. Our hosts had arranged for us to visit the Corrie ten Boom House, made famous through The Hiding Place. We met other members of our U.S. team there, along with Peter from here in the Netherlands.
Haarlem feels like a preserved fragment of another century: a canal cutting through the center of town; narrow, leaning buildings lined with bakeries, small shops, and cafés; bicycles everywhere; and, anchoring it all, the great Gothic mass of St. Bavo Church rising over the square. Just around the corner sits the narrow house where the ten Boom family lived—the now-familiar story of a household that risked everything to feed, clothe, shelter, and transport Jews seeking refuge during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands (1940–1945).
The house itself began as a watch shop at street level, with family living quarters above. Over time, the front house and an additional structure behind it were joined by placing a ship’s mast in the alley and building a staircase around it to link the original house with the annex behind. We climbed two flights of narrow spiral stairs where the tread measures perhaps eight inches on the wide side and barely two on the narrow. At the top we entered a modest living room that had once served as Corrie’s aunt’s apartment.
Our guide—a tall, angular former Dutch soldier with tattooed arms—asked how old we thought the house was. It dates to the 1490s, roughly when Columbus sailed west. That fact alone resets your sense of scale.
He then narrated a condensed history of Corrie ten Boom and her family, and a few things stood out with fresh force.
First, the long obedience that preceded the crisis: Corrie’s grandfather had begun praying for Jerusalem generations before Corrie herself would smuggle ration cards, hide refugees behind false walls, and shuttle hunted men and women through the maze of rooms of her home.
Second, the turning point in Corrie’s life did not come on the heels of her formulating plans for self-styled “altruism” or world impact. It did not follow the completion of some deliberate course of preparation for how to become a kingdom instrument of forgiveness who would eventually speak across continents after helping save hundreds of lives from Nazi camps.
No. The fulcrum in Corrie’s life came in heartbreak.
As she recounts in the narrative told to John and Elizabeth Sherrill—and as our guide retold it this week—the pivot came when she fell in love. She met Carl, whom her family approved of and who seemed certain to become her husband. Then suddenly, without explanation, he disappeared from her life, only to reappear later with another woman on his arm, introducing her to Corrie and Betsie as his fiancée.
Only later would she learn of family pressures placed on him to marry within his social class. But that is not the point. The point is what followed. In the darkness that ensued—in the spiraling, sobbing collapse of her hopes—her father said something she found the grace to accept and obey:
Corrie, take all the love you had prepared for Carl and turn it outward toward others so that nothing is wasted.
She obeyed. And she would later describe the moment as a key turning in her heart—a refocusing of vision. She began to notice needs everywhere.
At first it was small things: inviting neighborhood girls off the streets into her home; then later hosting gatherings for boys and girls that included laughter, prayer, and Bible study. Then it widened: welcoming a hunted synagogue cantor into their living room; then another; then many more. Soon hundreds would pass quietly through the watch shop, dispersed to farms, attics, basements, and villages across the Netherlands as a loose but courageous network of Christians resisted brutality with kindness—resisted fear with love and death with the stubborn decision to choose life, even at risk to themselves.
They were not naïve. Years before the Gestapo knocked on their door in February 1944, they anticipated danger and built a concealed hiding place behind Corrie’s bedroom wall—reinforced with bricks and designed by an architect so precisely that even trained officers later failed to discover the six people hidden inside, though the house sat less than a quarter block from Gestapo headquarters.
And the pivots kept unfolding.
Corrie endured solitary confinement and learned again how to give—in prayer, in unspoken choices, in crafting flecks of color in her austere cell. Her father died, and she pivoted again, learning to think of him as finally beyond fear, hunger, and abuse. She and Betsie were deported to Ravensbrück where suffering intensified. When they were infested with fleas, Betsie insisted they thank God for them: without the fleas, the guards would enter their barracks and the women would lose their fragile space for Bible study and hope.
The pivots continued as catastrophe pressed in. Corrie kept redirecting love toward the world as it was, not as it should have been—and found that grace prevailed even amid chaos and hell.
You know the rest. At fifty-two, Corrie was released by what appeared to be a clerical error—just days before the prisoners her age would be killed. Betsie had earlier told her, from what she believed was a dream from the Lord, that they would both be free that year. Betsie did not live to see liberation, but Corrie carried forward the promise.
After the war, Corrie established a rehabilitation home for survivors, planted flowers where brutality had scorched the earth, and ministered to those shattered by trauma. Yet another pivot awaited her: forgiveness.
Betsie had told her, If we cannot forgive, then even when the war ends, it will rage on within us. Corrie began speaking across Europe and America about forgiveness. Then, one evening in Germany, after a lecture, an elderly man approached her. She recognized him immediately as one of the guards from Ravensbrück. He did not recognize her. He said he had come to Christ and asked her forgiveness, extending his hand.
She froze. How could she take the hand that once held a whip and released dogs and locked train cars? Yet she did. She later said that when she grasped his hand, forgiveness flowed through her like an electric current—and in that moment she knew she herself was finally and fully free.
As we stepped back onto Haarlem’s cobblestone streets—past boutiques and cafés, past glass storefronts and bicycles and the steady bustle of a modern European town—you could almost forget such darkness ever existed. Eighty years feels distant. It is easy to imagine that the world no longer does such things.
But history warns otherwise. That illusion paralyzed many in Corrie’s generation when courage was required. The ten Boom family shone precisely because they refused that delusion.
Time is filled with swift transition, and none of us knows what lies ahead. We pray we may never face such trials. Yet Corrie stands as a giant not only for moments of global catastrophe but for the heartbreaks each of us knows: betrayal, disappointment, dismantled dreams, disrupted plans.
Whether in worldwide crisis or confined to the storms within our own rib cages, we still face the same choice. Corrie teaches us that we have the power to pivot—to absorb loss without being defined by it; to refuse the identity of the victim; and instead to pour out the stored-up love of our lives where it is needed most.
And in doing so, we may just discover not less than we lost, but far more: a lifetime enlarged by purpose, redemption, meaning, and the unfailing love of God.
P.S. Thank you for your continued prayer support for our season of ministry here in the Netherlands. These days have been full—filled with teaching, open Scripture, earnest growth, and the evident grace of God resting on the two congregations we are serving. It is an immeasurable privilege to labor alongside our brothers and sisters here for this brief season.