Today’s post will be a departure from the usual kid filled blogging.
This week I read The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. Wow! One of my friends recommended that I read it. She recently blogged about her visit to the Beje, the ten Boom house in Holland.
While reading the book, I was crying even before WWII even started. Father ten Boom had so much wisdom to give his children and their mother set such a wonderful example of showing love to others in very practical means. The family laid an excellent foundation for what they were called to do – hide Jews and others who were trying to escape from the Nazis.
When Corrie was a child she asked her father to explain something she had overheard others talking about and he responded by asking her to carry his heavy case off the train. She was unable to move the case. Her father said, “And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It’s the same, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger, you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it.” Corrie writes that she was “more than satisfied” with this answer, that the answer gave her peace. Later when other hard questions came up, Corrie asked God to carry the load for her.
I was blown away by her father’s response when the man Corrie loved became engaged to another woman. Her father told her, “Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill the love so it stops hurting. But then, of course, part of us dies, too. Or, Corrie, we can ask God to open another route for that love to travel. God loves Karel-more than you do-and if you ask Him, He will give you His love for this man, a love nothing can prevent, nothing destroy. Whenever we cannot love in the old human way, Corrie, God can give us the perfect way.”
Corrie wrote that the advice her father gave her was “the secret that would open far darker rooms than this-places where there was not, on a human level, anything to love at all.” Decades later, after she survived the concentration camp, she was able to forgive the person that betrayed her family and the guards and officers who were responsible for her suffering in prison.
Other than reading Night in high school and seeing Life is Beautiful, I really didn’t know a lot about WWII and the concentration camps. I was deeply moved by how bad life in prison was for Corrie and her sister. I was also encouraged by her deepening faith in God and how the Bible came alive for her while she watched the world go darker and darker with evil.
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2 comments:
Great comments, Renee. I've heard so much about this book from other people, I guess I just have to read it for myself. I've been scared to open myself to that extensive knowledge and pain of that time.
I am so glad you enjoyed it Renee. I am reading it again now and I have been struck again by those same passages you had pointed out. There was such wisdom in her parents. I have also been struck by the faithfulness of her family. Her journey down this road started generations before her when her grandfather (or great grandfather) agreed to start a prayer meeting in their home for the God's Chosen people, the Jews. Little did they know the fruit that these prayers were going to bring.
I also loved the wisdom her mother gave when Tante Bep was dying and Corrie wanted her to be someplace where she was happier and her mother said that happiness isn't something that depends on our surroundings, it's something we make inside ourselves. There is such great wisdom in here, I am glad to read it again.
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