“Christmas did not arrive to remove the fleas.
It arrived to prove that even in the places we would never choose, God still chooses to be present.”
– Dr. Steve Hudgins
When I read The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, one moment stayed with me more than I expected: Barracks 28 and the fleas.
Not because it was poetic.
But because it was honest.
Corrie did not tell a story of suffering being removed.
She told a story of suffering being inhabited.
The fleas remained, but because of them, the guards stayed away.
And because the guards stayed away, faith survived quietly where it should not have.
Scripture was read.
Prayer was spoken.
Hope endured in a place designed to erase it.
What deepened this story for me was standing inside the British Museum, looking at authenticated historical artifacts that anchor these accounts in reality. These were not symbolic stories passed down through sentiment or softened by time. They were preserved pieces of human history, physical evidence of suffering, faith, and endurance. Seeing them removed any distance between the reader and the truth. What had been written was not imagined. It was lived.
That encounter strengthened my belief, not because it eliminated mystery, but because it grounded faith in history. The suffering was real. The courage was real. The presence of God was not theoretical; it was witnessed in flesh and time.
What unsettled me most was not the cruelty of the conditions, but the realization that what troubled them most became what protected them. The women of Barracks 28 learned to pray for the fleas, not because suffering was good, but because gratitude anchored them to meaning when circumstances offered none. Scripture calls us to contentment and thanksgiving, not as denial of pain, but as resistance against despair.
That truth reshaped how I understand Christmas.
We often look for God to arrive by fixing what hurts.
Corrie reminded me that sometimes God arrives by entering it.
By choosing the places no one else wants.
By sheltering hope through means that make no sense until much later.
I did not know how to be thankful when I was given a cancer diagnosis and told I had a 34 percent chance of living. Gratitude felt unreachable then. Yet survival reframed everything. What followed was not simply relief, but a renewed understanding of life itself as a miraculous gift. Today, I live with a 99.9 percent chance of a long life, and that reality has cultivated a thankfulness that could only have emerged through the valley that preceded it.
Sometimes what threatens us most becomes the teacher we never asked for.
Sometimes what we curse at first becomes the reason we are still standing.
I recognize that belief does not come easily for everyone. But at some point, we all place our faith somewhere, in chance, control, resignation, or hope. I chose to believe in a miracle that entered human suffering and altered the course of history, not by force, but by presence.
Christmas does not promise comfort.
It promises incarnation.
And perhaps that is why the most minor things matter so deeply. A prayer whispered in a barrack. A flea that keeps cruelty at bay. A life spared when the odds said otherwise. Even a smile offered by someone who feels insignificant can interrupt darkness in ways they may never fully see.
God has always done His most sacred work in overlooked places.
And He is still doing it now.
Merry Christmas, there is a miracle in each of us. We just have to believe.