God Calms the Storms

March 8th, 2026

Third Sunday of Lent

Readings: Psalm 65:1-8 & Mark 4:35-41

Part of Sermon Series: Noteworthy Christians - Corrie ten Boom

There are many storms we face throughout our lives. Sometimes these storms are internal, personal, horrible things that happen to us alone. Other times these storms are experienced with a few others. Always, we are caught up in the storm that surrounds us all collectively; no one who lives in society can escape our collective.. weather.

Yet just as the Hebrew people knew in ancient times and we know today, “God calms the roaring seas, roaring waves, and the noise of the nations.”

However, this doesn’t always look as black and white as it sounds. For example, look at the disciples on the boat with Jesus in the storm. They believed God could calm storms, but Jesus was still sleeping! Why wasn’t he awake and working to save them!? Jesus, of course, wakes up, commands the storm to be still, then chastises the disciples, asking them why they’re even afraid?! He says, “Don’t you have faith yet!?” I would have been as bewildered and frustrated as the disciples! As fisherman, how many men had they known who had perished in storms out at sea? Of course, they were afraid! What does faith have to do with safety in a literal storm!? Yet Jesus calmed the storm that day, showing all his powerful ability to work with creation.

As we continue through our Lenten journey in the desert, we know, that just like in a storm without the physical presence of Jesus, the only way out is through. In these times of struggle, we learn about ourselves and our God along the way; never coming out the other side the same, but always transformed in one way or another. As I thought about Jesus calming storms, I couldn’t help but think of Corrie ten Boom.

Corrie ten Boom was born in the Netherlands 1892 as the youngest child of Casper and Cornelia ten Boom. Corrie had 3 older siblings, Betsie, William, and Nollie. Casper owned a watch shop and the family lived above the shop. The family were devout Dutch Reformed Christians and Casper raised his household to live out of their hearts’ understanding that all humans are made of God, loved by God, and should be treated as such. This meant that the house was always full, as Casper held a strict open door policy. Corrie grew up with her siblings, parents, and three of her mother’s sisters. After her mother and her aunts had passed away and both William and Nollie married and had families of their own, Corrie, Betsie and their father filled the house back up with foster children. During and after WWI, the number of orphaned children was overwhelming.

While Nollie and her family lived just down the street, her brother William’s family moved a few towns over after William was ordained a minister. William was the first in the family to go to college and he wrote in seminary of the terrible evil seeping into the hearts of many forming the Nazi movement. He was also the first in the family to join the Dutch Underground Resistance, working to hide, feed, and transfer Jews to safety.

In May of 1940, when Corrie was 48, still living and working with her father and Betsie in the watch shop, the Germans invaded the Netherlands. Known as a house with an open door, Jews began coming to their home for aid. Corrie reached out to William for advice and found he and his son had already been working for the Dutch Resistance. Corrie was flabbergasted, because she knew this work came with all sorts of things they were taught not to do as Christians – like lying and stealing. She struggled with what it meant to be a Christian in the midst of such a storm and what God was calling them to do. Finally, William’s then 22 year old son Kik introduced her to the underground. There she met some familiar faces from her hometown and many new ones. A man offered to build a hiding place within their home above the watch shop to help hide and transport Jews on their way to safety. The space held 6 people at a time and was one of the safest places in all of Holland.

It is believed around 800 people were saved through the hiding place at the ten Boom home. However, in February of 1944, the home was raided on a day when everyone was there to visit. 30 people were arrested, including Corrie, her father and all her siblings. The hiding place safely held four Jews and two members of the resistance, who were all able to escape at a later time. Most of those arrested were let go, but Corrie, Betsie, William and their father remained.

Corrie spent three months in solitary confinement before the trial began. Her father Casper died just ten days after the arrest. William was let go, but in bad shape. After the trial, Corrie and Betsie were sent as political prisoners to the concentration camp, Camp Vught. Not long after, they were transported by train into Germany to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp for women and children. This camp was mainly for political prisoners and only about 15% of them were Jewish. By nothing short of a miracle, Corrie was able to smuggle a tiny Bible inside with her. Ravensbruck was as miserable as you’ve heard about WWII. They were slave laborers, starved, experimented on, thousands cramped in ‘dorms’ built for hundreds, riddled with lice and fleas. Yet Corrie and Betsie each night would read from the Bible. Women of all European nations would join and be filled with hope and light within deep darkness.

In December, just 10 months after their arrest, they had no idea, but the war was coming to an end and a final push to empty the camps had begun. Ravensbruck gathered up all the women healthy enough to put them on a train for moving. Due to a kind nurse who ensured Corrie could stay back with her dying sister, the girls missed the train. The next day Betsie died of starvation. Ten days later, Corrie was released. She wouldn’t find out until over a decade later that she was released thanks to a clerical error. The day after she left, they ordered all the remaining women her age to the gas chambers.

Before Betsie died, she shared with Corrie dreams of helping those after the war heal from all the trauma. One of the last things she said to Corrie before she died has stayed with me throughout the last decade of my own life; she whispered, “there is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.” Corrie spoke fondly of her sister Betsie as the one who had unwavering faith every step of the way. Corrie struggled to thank God everyday, struggled to look upon her captors with sympathy and forgiveness.. yet Betsie gave thanks always and lifted those who hurt her up to the Lord. She would recite the Word, ‘never repay evil for evil,’ and ‘in all things, give thanks!’ She saw the camps as an opportunity to spread the gospel and she inspired forgiveness and hope in countless prisoners.

I believe her influence can be seen on full display in that, four months after Corrie’s release, when Ravensbruck was liberated, a note was found on the body of a dead girl that read, “O Lord, remember, not only the men and women of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted on us; remember the fruits we have borne, thanks to this suffering: our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this, and when they come to judgement, let all the fruits we have borne be their forgiveness.”

Corrie returned home and with Betsie’s vision in mind, she established a rehabilitation center to house survivors of concentration camps. Although it wasn’t as easy for her as for Betsie, she held onto God’s Word and Betsie’s belief in forgiveness. As the occupation ended, many of the Dutch who collaborated with the Germans were put out of their jobs and their homes. Corrie opened the center’s doors to them and created a path toward healing and reconciliation between those harmed by the Nazis and those who aided in their misery. Although it was difficult for all involved, Corrie knew this was the only path forward toward healing.

It wasn’t long before Corrie was offered the opportunity to also convert an old German concentration camp into a center for war refugees and the displaced. For over a decade, the work of rehabilitation and reconciliation were Corrie’s ministry. Once Europe began to rebuild and be restored, physically and emotionally, Corrie felt called to write and to share globally the gospel message of God’s light in the darkness, of the truth that there is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.

Corrie traveled to 61 countries sharing this message and wrote books that reached many more souls, including my own. At the age of 85, Corrie settled in California for retirement. The following year she had two strokes, which left her paralyzed and unable to speak. She died on the evening of her 91^st birthday. Corrie dedicated her life, in word and deed, to the gospel news of forgiveness, hope, and love; a true miracle after the horrors she witnessed, after the massive losses she experienced firsthand. It’s hard to imagine how she made it out of the storm that was WWII and yet she made it out transformed for the better. She did not harden her heart, but let her heart be transformed to reach levels of forgiveness, hope, and love she never even knew were possible.

Her story makes me think of the disciples panicking in the storm as Jesus napped. I can hear the voices of the disciples as the haunting voice of Corrie and the prisoners yelling, “God, don’t you care that we are perishing!?” I still cannot make sense of Jesus’ answer. I still can’t get behind his dismissal of their fear, his frustration in their ‘little faith.’ I still can’t quite wrap my head around the idea that Jesus CAN control things, and what, chooses not to?! Like Corrie, I have questions. And yet, like Betsie taught us, the only answer is surrender to the mystery; to let go and give into the love of God - the love that shines in the darkness and cannot be overcome, the love that goes deeper than any pit of despair known to humanity.

It is not the answer we want (I want), but is the answer we hold onto in every storm of life, through every season in the desert. Love, God’s unconditional, steadfast love, IS the answer to all things, the balm to every woe, the calm in every storm. It is the hope that tethers our souls to the fact that in life or in death, the future is worth holding onto, because God is there. Always and forevermore. Amen.