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There are some new beginnings that arrive at midnight with fireworks.
Others can only begin when you finally decide to let something go.
This week we stepped into Tishrei and the new year 5787, months before the new year we will celebrate in January. Tishrei carries the meaning “beginning,” and an ancient Aramaic interpretation connects it with something else: to let go, to untie, to forgive.
Beginning again. Letting go. Forgiveness.
Which brings us to two sisters from Haarlem, Holland, whose lives would become an unforgettable story of all three:
Betsie and Corrie ten Boom.
Betsie was Corrie’s older sister by seven years, and she had a gift for finding hope even when there seemed to be none. That gift became especially precious when both sisters were imprisoned behind the barbed wire of Ravensbrück concentration camp for helping hide refugees from the Nazis. Near the end of 1944, with her health failing, Betsie began talking about what could come after the war.
She told Corrie she envisioned a beautiful country house where people wounded by all they had endured could come to heal and begin again. And she pictured it in surprising detail:Â tall leaded windows, intricate inlaid wooden floors, a grand gallery and carved figures decorating the walls.
Then, Betsie died on December 16, 1944, without ever seeing that house. But just days later, Corrie’s name was unexpectedly called for release because of a clerical error. She walked out of Ravensbrück carrying her sister’s dream with her. By the spring of 1945, Corrie was speaking wherever she was invited, sharing what she and Betsie had learned and telling others about her sister’s dream of a mansion for forgiveness and healing.
After one of those meetings, a widow named Mrs. Bierens de Haan approached Corrie. She had five sons who had served in the Resistance, and one of them, Jan, had been taken to Germany and was still missing. As she listened to Corrie describe Betsie’s vision, Mrs. de Haan made a promise: if Jan came home, she would open her own home so others returning from the war could begin again too.
Two weeks later came the news: Jan was home!
Mrs. de Haan kept her promise and took Corrie to her family’s country estate in Bloemendaal.
Around the final bend stood an avenue of ancient oaks, and a 56-room mansion on a vast lawn, with the same tall leaded windows Betsie had described. Almost afraid to ask, Corrie turned to Mrs. de Haan.
Were there inlaid wooden floors inside? A grand gallery around a central hall? Carved figures set into the walls?
Mrs. de Haan stared at Corrie in disbelief, certain she must have visited Schapenduinen before. But Corrie had never set foot there. Betsie had described those very details from inside RavensbrĂĽck, never knowing that beyond the barbed wire, the mansion she imagined was already standing!
And as it turns out, Betsie did get to see a Mansion of Forgiveness. Just not this one. Jesus had already promised, “I go to prepare a place for you.”
“In my Father’s house are many mansions... I go to prepare a place for you.”
John 14:2 KJV
Even the estate’s name Schapenduinen seemed made for what was coming. More than a century earlier, prized Merino sheep from Spain had grazed its sandy dunes, giving its name, meaning “Sheep Dunes.” Then in 1942, a stone relief of a shepherd, sheep and sheepfold was placed above the mansion’s entrance.
Soon, people wounded by the war would walk beneath that shepherd and through those doors. Prayers of blessing were lifted for them and for those who would care for them, asking God for faith, health and strength. A place had been prepared, and wounded sheep were coming home.
Corrie gave them rooms, but forgiveness gave them keys. Of the wounded people who came to Schapenduinen, she later wrote,
“The key to healing turned out to be the same. Each had a hurt he had to forgive.”
Corrie knew how difficult that key could be to turn. Years later, when a former RavensbrĂĽck guard stood before her asking for forgiveness, she had to turn it herself.
And there is another 56 worth noticing. Psalm 56 says,
“Put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?”
Psalm 56:8 KJV
God remembers every tear, so we do not have to carry them with us on the journey.Â
So this week, and in this new year of 5787, release your tears to the Great Shepherd, take the key of forgiveness in your hand, and walk untied into your new beginning. There are doors ahead that God may be waiting to open.
Ask your Shepherd to bless the road before you, then be someone who points another sheep toward the Mansion He is preparing, where one day every tear will be wiped away.
Until next Tuesday, may your blessings be double and your burdens be light.
Michelle Driscoll
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