I’ve met some extraordinary people in my time. Take my friends Ladislav and his wife Melanija for example.

I first met them when I was a member of a mission team taking aid to the war-torn Yugoslavia in the 1990s and discovered that their church building was located on the front line of a battlefield.

For Croatia’s tiny evangelical population, the war and its tragic consequences were both a challenge and a God-given opportunity to do something positive, and they certainly did just that. Ladislav and Melanija exemplified this kind of missionary zeal and sought to do whatever they could to care for others, even though that meant remaining in a front-line town with all that implied. On one occasion for example Ladislav persuaded a group of Croatian soldiers to leave their hurriedly constructed bunker and take shelter in the church building close to it.  An artillery shell blew that bunker to pieces very soon after they did.

They were not spared their own suffering either. Melanija’s father was repeatedly stabbed and nearly died for example and yet in spite of this both she and her husband continued to reach out to all sides of the ethnic divide without fear or favour. Is it any wonder then that I find them truly inspirational?

Sadly, I never met Corrie Ten Boom and I never will until we do so in glory. But I’m delighted to say millions of people will be able to learn of this remarkable lady through a new cinema adaption of her life called ‘The Hiding Place’.

Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch watchmaker, who worked with her father, sister and other members of her family to help people escape from the Nazis during the Holocaust in World War II by hiding them in her home. Sadly but, I would guess, inevitably, they were caught and eventually sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp ‘The Hiding Place’ tells the story of all they did to show God’s love with those who were also imprisoned there. In fact they were able to get a Bible into the camp and so hold regular Bible studies.

Remarkably, and thankfully Corrie survived this terrible ordeal and dedicated her life to sharing her life-giving message of faith and forgiveness, helped it seems by fleas! It would appear that the guards would not enter the barracks because they were infested!

We are living in a cynical age; a time of volatility, uncertainty and extreme cruelty which is why I am so grateful for people such as these. They were convinced that God is in ultimate control of all that happens to us and in so doing they shine like stars in a dark sky.

They also believed that they should care for others too, whoever they were and wherever they came from. Indeed I find Corrie Boom’s train ticket very helpful; she recalled the time her father gave her one and she remembered him saying that our Heavenly Father would give her the tickets she would need to go on any journey He planned for her, and He would give it at the moment she needed it. She clung to that truth all her life.

These spiritual giants discovered that it can be hard to forgive too. Melanija forgave the soldiers who brutally mistreated her family and Corrie Ten Boom had to face the challenge of forgiving a former guard who had since become a Christian. “Forgiveness” she said “is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.”

Actress Nan Gurley who plays the part of Corrie Ten Boom in ‘The Hiding Place’ said ‘We have been chosen to live in this hour, it’s no accident. He has the ticket for each one of us for the things He asks us to do’. I wonder what that means for you?