In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. 1. Thessalonians 5:18

Earlier this morning I watched the rain pour from the eaves of the roof and drip down my rain chain like a vertical stream from the sky. I am thankful for the rain and even more glad that here in New Meadows it is not snowing since I had the snow tires changed out a week ago. Surely mid April is not too early, but this year’s weather is a wild and unpredictable mountain child. Still, everyone is grateful for the rain and the snow, for all water in our dry and parched land.

I poured myself a coffee, wrapped up in my well- used fuzzy blanket and read my favorite devotional . It stopped me in mid-sentences several times. The devotional described Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian and a survivor of Ravensbruck concentration camp during the Second World War. It was about forgiveness, gratitude and blessings found in darkness most of us can’t fathom. Her full story is told in “The Hiding Place”, and also in a movie of the same name. It’s a story of her courage hiding and helping  Jewish families escape the Nazis until she and her family were themselves arrested and interred in a death camp. It’s must-read biography for us Christians living in an age of increasing moral darkness – to remind ourselves that in God’s world evil will not, cannot prevail because God is a righteous God. His Son Jesus walked through every death camp and overcame.

Corrie and her sister Betsie somehow smuggled a Bible into the camp and they held secret, daily prayer meetings, encouraging other women in their faith. However, because of the unsanitary conditions, they were plagued with fleas. Most of us have never had fleas, praise modern sanitation, but in super-crowded, filthy conditions, where one can’t wash or change clothes or even comb hair, fleas become a torment. They create endless itching, rashes which become infected and spread disease. I read that some people in the camps who were infested with fleas went mad and committed suicide. The fleas in Ravensbruck were so bad that Corrie questioned God. What, this also?

But then God’s grace shone a light into their misery. She realized that the camp guards stayed away from the prayer groups because of the fleas. Corrie and her sister were left alone by the guards who didn’t want to be infected with fleas and suffer like the women.  In the middle of seemingly pointless  affliction, they were left alone  to pray, read the Bible and find hope.Truly, what the enemy wanted for evil, God turned into good. Corrie understood the bigger picture and was abler to thank God in her circumstances, especially, even for the fleas.

There’s a lot more to Corrie ten Boom’s story and about forgiving the unforgivable, but I’m struck with the images of fleas. In my life- and perhaps in yours, what of God’s mercy have we overlooked because something apart from God has grabbed all our attention and focus? Some affliction, illness, loss,  pestilence,  pain or panic,  or blindfolding  circumstance which turns our lives upside-down? A flea bite we allow to fester and bleed and infect our hearts? It may be a faith-shaking disaster but even if it is a Ravensbruck hell hole, Corrie ten Boom’s life declared that God is light and the darkness can never overcome Him. His mercies and blessings are new every day. If the Father can and did use nasty little insects to show Himself, to the prayer warriors in Ravensbruck, what might He not hear as prayer in our flea-infested trials, be it all for His glory.