Recently I've been reading a biography about Corrie Ten Boom. There are so many reasons why I am loving reading her story and about who she is. For starters, she is a pioneer for women, as the first woman to be a certified watchmaker in Holland, trained by her father, a Master Watchmaker. Furthermore, the social clubs she began for girls and young women spread across the country. All of these achievements, however, diminish in comparison with what she was best known for: a network for hiding Jewish people during the Nazi invasion.
There is a well known quote from her that I have been keeping close to my heart which says, "Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God." The past year has certainly felt precarious for most of the world. In my own life, I recently stepped away from the safety of a professional career to chase the dream of being an entrepreneur. No matter what it is that has brought uncertainty into our lives, we all feel it to some degree.
That is where my faith comes to play. In the first chapter of James in the Bible, God makes a promise that if one prays for wisdom, it will be given. Not only that, we are to act on the wisdom that is given lest we be "like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind."
Wisdom isn't simply knowledge, although knowledge is needed to apply it. It goes farther and deeper than information, taking it to action, specifically correct action, and it may seem to others like some kind of foresight. One may gain wisdom from experience, but not always. It is not merely logic, nor is it simply an accurate perception. Rather, it's the marriage of the two that follows through into a response.
Corrie Ten Boom faced an uncertainty in her circumstances as well as great peril for herself and her family, but even in the face of great evil disguised as a kind of morality, she prayed for wisdom and acted on it. She trusted her unknown future and that of her family to her known God, the same God she had grown to love and trust and portray to others. She displayed unwavering faith in the wisdom God had given her to protect those deemed unworthy of life by those in power. Her testimony and legacy live on even today, almost 40 years after her death.