Praise For the Fleas

10/30/2024

Written by: Paige Wassel

“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” – 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

In her book The Hiding Place, Dutch Resistance member Corrie ten Boom recounts her family’s efforts to shelter Jews from the Nazis during World War II in their home and watchmaking shop, saving hundreds through their actions. Eventually arrested, Corrie and her sister Betsie are sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp where they endure indignity after indignity, including a flea-infested barracks.

As Corrie bemoans how they can live in such a place, Betsie recalls the words they had recently read in 1 Thessalonians to give thanks in all circumstances, and prompts Corrie to remember their blessings: being assigned to the camp together, successfully smuggling in a Bible, their crowded conditions that will allow more to hear God’s word, and even the fleas.

Corrie, understandably, protests:

The fleas! This was too much. “Betsie, there’s no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.”
“‘Give thanks in all circumstances,’” she quoted. “It doesn’t say, ‘in pleasant circumstances.’ Fleas are part of this place where God has put us.” (excerpt from The Hiding Place).

Recently, I’ve been participating in a spiritual challenge that urges me to count my blessings. It’s been easy to give thanks for the tangible good: the ability to pay my bills, stock my fridge, talk to loved ones, walk outside in his creation, and time to rest and recharge with favorite hobbies like reading and knitting. However, I confess, I don’t do a great job of thanking God for the unknown ways he is moving in the hard chapters of my life and the lives of those around me. I cry out to him to fix the broken relationships. To remove all traces of cancer. To pay the overdue bills. To combat loneliness and isolation.

We may never have the answers to some prayers this side of heaven. But I don’t think it’s any coincidence that in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-17, Paul advises the church to “pray continually,” in between his urging to “rejoice always,” and “give thanks in all circumstances.” When I regularly talk to God, I am reminded that no matter the situation, he is with me. Like a parent patiently listening to his child, he hears all the desires and cries of my heart. As I become more aware of his Spirit, my eyes see the good alongside the bad.

In Corrie ten Boom’s case, her sister Betsie reveals God’s purpose in the fleas in this conversation from The Hiding Place:

“You know we’ve never understood why we had so much freedom in the big room,” she said. “Well—I’ve found out.”
That afternoon, she said, there’d been confusion in her knitting group about sock sizes and they’d asked the supervisor to come and settle it.
“But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t step through the door and neither would the guards. And you know why?”
Betsie could not keep the triumph from her voice: “Because of the fleas! That’s what she said, ‘That place is crawling with fleas!’”
My mind rushed back to our first hour in this place. I remembered Betsie’s bowed head, remembered her thanks to God for creatures I could see no use for.

The presence of the fleas gave the sisters a measure of protection from the guards’ advances and the freedom to share their hidden Bible with other prisoners. Their unimaginable living conditions do not suddenly improve, but Corrie continues to notice ways God shows up in their story.

Perhaps, God is drawing my attention to the “fleas” in my life to stir me to action. To pray. To be his hands and feet, meeting the needs of those around me as I am able. To find comfort in sharing my burdens and experiences with others, reminding all of us of the eternal hope we have in Christ beyond this present reality.

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” -Romans 8: 35,37