The Hiding Place

by Corrie ten Boom

“this is what the past is for! Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for a future that only He can see.”

I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do.

And I was satisfied. More than satisfied—wonderfully at peace. There were answers to this and all my hard questions—for now I was content to leave them in my father’s keeping.

And our wise Father in heaven knows when we’re going to need things, too. Don’t run out ahead of Him, Corrie. When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look into your heart and find the strength you need—just in time.”

“Lord, I give to You the way I feel about Karel, my thoughts about our future—oh, You know! Everything! Give me Your way of seeing Karel instead. Help me to love him that way. That much.”

“But if God has shown us bad times ahead, it’s enough for me that He knows about them. That’s why He sometimes shows us things, you know—to tell us that this too is in His hands.”

There are no ‘ifs’ in God’s world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety—Oh Corrie, let us pray that we may always know it!”

Was this what God wanted in times like these? How should a Christian act when evil was in power?

“A completed Jew” he would tell us smilingly. “A follower of the one perfect Jew.”

We didn’t know, of course, the political views of all these people. But—and here I felt a strange leaping of my heart—God did! My job was simply to follow His leading one step at a time, holding every decision up to Him in prayer. I knew I was not clever or subtle or sophisticated; if the Beje was becoming a meeting place for need and supply, it was through some strategy far higher than mine.

Harry kissed his wife. Then he took my hand and shook it solemnly. Tears filled our eyes. For the first time Harry spoke. “I shall use this place—wherever they’re taking us,” he said. “It will be my witness stand for Jesus.”

Perhaps only when human effort had done its best and failed, would God’s power alone be free to work.

The real sin lay in thinking that any power to help and transform came from me. Of course it was not my wholeness, but Christ’s that made the difference.

There are no “ifs” in God’s kingdom. I could hear her soft voice saying it. His timing is perfect. His will is our hiding place. Lord Jesus, keep me in Your will! Don’t let me go mad by poking about outside it.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.

she brought the truth the sisters learned in Ravensbruck: Jesus can turn loss into glory.

To me the star says, Whatever in our life is hardest to bear, love can transform into beauty.

The circle of white cotton told me that when we’re feeling poorest—when we’ve lost a friend, when a dream has failed, when we seem to have nothing left in the world to make life beautiful—that’s when God says, You’re richer than you think.