I Never Thanked Him
Story★★★★★At the inhumane prison in Germany every Friday the Nazis made the prisoners undress for medical inspection. They were humiliated. The woman had to march before grinning guards. On one of those mornings Corrie ten Boom says, “Yet another page in the Bible leapt into life for me. ‘He hung naked on the cross.’ I had not known—had not thought…the paintings, the carved crucifixes showed at least a scrap of cloth. But this, I suddenly knew, was the respect and reverence of the artist. But oh—at the time itself, on that other Friday morning—there had been no reverence. No more than I saw in the faces around us now.
“I leaned toward Betsie, ahead of me in line. Her shoulder blades stood so sharp and thin beneath her blue and mottled skin. ‘Betsie, they took His clothes too.’
“Ahead of me I heard a gasp. ‘Oh, Corrie. And I never thanked Him…’” (p. 196, The Hiding Place, Fleming H. Revell Co.). –John M. Drescher, Testimony of Triumph, (The Zondervan Corporation, Grand Rapids, MI, 1980), 60.
The point
Corrie ten Boom, stripped naked for inspection in a Nazi prison like Christ on the cross, realized for the first time that Jesus suffered this same humiliation—and she wept, 'I never thanked Him.' Gratitude for His sacrifice becomes real.