During the Fifth Week of Lent, all those who follow the Common Lectionary once again found themselves reading in Daniel 3, the recounting of the three Hebrew youths in the fiery furnace…who stand against the dictate of the most powerful political leader in the world at the time, Nebuchadnezzar, and declare they will not bow down to the golden statue he has erected, even on pain of a fiery death in the flames of the furnace.
Trusting in their God to deliver them, if He so chooses, they wind up being tossed, bound, into the blazing hot furnace, only to be seen walking about, in the midst of the flames, apparently unharmed, with a fourth figure that Nebuchadnezzar declares looks like, ‘…a son of God.’ He calls the three out, and though they were clearly seen in the midst of the flames, their clothing is intact and there isn’t a sniff of smoke about them…which causes Nebuchadnezzar to declare, ‘Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who sent his angel to deliver the servants who trusted in him: they disobeyed the royal command and yielded their bodies rather than serve or worship any god except their own God.’ (Dan. 3:95)
There is another historical account of a saint who went through the fire and survived, one, St. Martin of Tours.1 In the account of the incident, he becomes trapped in a room where his straw mattress, which he cast aside as too comfortable for him to sleep upon, catches fire from a faulty stove beneath the floor of the cell in which he is sleeping. At first, he tries desperately to escape the flames, but the rusted bolt of the door defies his attempts to dislodge it. Finally, he resigns himself to the care of the Lord he serves and lays down amidst the flames.
Recounting the story, in Pilgrim Road: A Benedictine Journey through Lent, writer, Albert Holtz, O.S.B., resorts to describing the end of the incident in the words of St. Martin of Tours biographer, Sulpicius,
At length recovering his habitual conviction that safety lay not in flight but in the Lord, and seizing the shield of faith and prayer, committing himself entirely to the Lord, he lay down in the midst of the flames. Then indeed, the fire having been removed by divine intervention, he continued to pray amid a circle of flames that did him no harm.2
Holtz asserts that St. Martin admitted to taking too long to resort to prayer as his source of safety and saw the incident as an attempt of the devil to snare him. Holtz goes on to suggest that we all know what it is to panic in the midst of an unexpected threat and forget that God is there with us. He says,
In the flames of difficult situations, when everything seems to be coming apart, I take too long to hand things over to the Lord. I, like St. Martin, the great Bishop of Tours, take too long tugging at the bolt and only later remember to stop trying to control things and turn confidently to the power of prayer.3
A survivor of the Nazi death camps, Corrie ten Boom barely missed being sent into the fiery furnaces at Ravensbruck, Germany. Ten Boom was a Dutch, Christian woman, who together with her sister, Betsy, both in their 50’s, and their father, Caspar, were imprisoned for assisting Jews to escape the Nazi persecutions that swept across Holland with the invasion of the German armies. Her father and her sister both died while imprisoned. After 10 months, Ten Boom was released through, she learned later, a clerical error. The week following her release, all the women her age were sent into the crematoriums.
After World War II ended, Ten Boom became an internationally known writer and speaker who recounted her experiences, and spoke of the God who sustained her, and forgiving her captors and tormentors. Her experiences were chronicled in the film, The Hiding Place, filmed by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Worldwide Pictures.4
Having the people she addressed marvel at her deep faith, Ten Boom rebuked them saying it wasn’t her own faith that sustained her, but the person of Jesus, Himself. According to one account written by the last of her traveling companions, Ten Boom discounted the strength of her faith, saying,
‘My faith was so weak, so unstable. It was hard to have faith. When a person is in a safe environment, having faith is easier. But in that camp when I saw my own sister and thousands of others starve to death, where I was surrounded by men and women who had training in cruelty, then I do not think it was my faith that helped me through. No, it was Jesus! He who said, “I am with you until the end of the world.” It was His eternal arms that carried me through. He was my certainty.’5
She added that if it was based on her level of faith, others would think they needed her level of faith to survive the difficulties and suffering of life. She concludes,
‘If I tell you that it was my faith, you might say if you have to go through suffering, “I don’t have Corrie ten Boom’s faith.” But if I tell you it was Jesus, then you can trust that He who helped me through will do the same for you. I have always believed it, but now I know from my own personal experience that His light is stronger than the deepest darkness.’6
Jesus is the One to take us through the flames of adversity…whether in the person of a 4th Man in the furnace, or as the strength and arms to sustain one in imprisonment and inhumane treatment by those ‘…trained in cruelty,’ as Ten Boom recounts.
When we face the fires of adversity, we must already know how to be sustained by the reality of Jesus as our personal Friend and Savior. If we only believe in our heads, and not in our hearts, our trust will falter and fail. Coming into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord is what will stand us in good stead when things become what we have never imagined could happen here among us in North America…Canada, the Western world. But, we cannot suppose that what has been faced by multiple thousands of Christians in other areas of the world, will never happen to us. The current trajectory of our governments and the anti-Christian sentiments becoming the ‘norm’ in our present day society do not bode well for our freedom to practice and believe our Christian faith.
Pray it would not be so, but, just in case, prepare in your heart for the possibility. We cannot continue to be the only location on God’s green earth where we do not experience what Our Lord experienced by being hated by the world and, ultimately, martyred for believing that He is who He says He is, the Anointed One of the Lord, the Only Begotten Son of the Father, Creator of heaven and earth, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. If we believe, we will share in His death, and, then, in His resurrection…Hallelujah!
As the ancient proclamation declares, Christ is Risen. Truly, He is Risen.
Let us Rejoice and live life in and through Him, daily, whatever threatens or befalls us.
1 https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/fathers/view.cfm?recnum=2098
2 Albert Holtz, O.S.B., Pilgrim Road: A Benedictine Journey Through Lent, Morehouse Publishing, 2006. p. 135
3 Ibid. p.136
4 https://www.christiancinema.com/digital/movie/the-hiding-place
5 Moore, Pam Rosewell, Life Lessons from Corrie ten Boom, Chosen Books, Grand Rapids, MI, 2004. p. 114
6 Ibid.
Ending Our Life Well 