More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
our wise Father in heaven knows when we’re going to need things, too. Don’t run out ahead of Him, Corrie.
Happiness isn’t something that depends on our surroundings, Corrie. It’s something we make inside ourselves.”
“My dear sister-in-law,” Father began gently, “there is a joyous journey which each of God’s children sooner or later sets out on. And, Jans, some must go to their Father empty-handed, but you will run to Him with hands full!” “All your clubs . . . ,” Tante Anna ventured. “Your writings . . . ,” Mama added. “The funds you’ve raised . . . ,” said Betsie. “Your talks . . . ,” I began. But our well-meant words were useless. In front of us the proud face crumpled; Tante Jans put her hands over her eyes and began to cry. “Empty, empty!” she choked at last through her tears. “How can we bring
...more
Margaret and 1 other person liked this
Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way, Corrie, God can give us the perfect way.”
Mama’s love had always been the kind that acted itself out with soup pot and sewing basket. But now that these things were taken away, the love seemed as whole as before. She sat in her chair at the window and loved us. She loved the people she saw in the street—and beyond: her love took in the city, the land of Holland, the world. And so I learned that love is larger than the walls that shut it in.
“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.”
For he had become a Christian, some forty years earlier, without ceasing in the least to be a loyal Jew. “A completed Jew” he would tell us smilingly. “A follower of the one perfect Jew.”
It’s only silver. We’re interested in saving people, not things.”
Father held the baby close, his white beard brushed its cheek, looking into the little face with eyes as blue and innocent as the baby’s own. At last he looked up at the pastor. “You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honor that could come to my family.”
This was evil’s hour: we could not run away from it. Perhaps only when human effort had done its best and failed, would God’s power alone be free to work.
At last some of the names I had shouted out began to return. “Betsie ten Boom is in cell 312. She says to tell you that God is good.”
But as the rest of the world grew stranger, one thing became increasingly clear. And that was the reason the two of us were here. Why others should suffer we were not shown. As for us, from morning until lights-out, whenever we were not in ranks for roll call, our Bible was the center of an ever-widening circle of help and hope. Like waifs clustered around a blazing fire, we gathered about it, holding out our hearts to its warmth and light. The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the word of God. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
...more
But it was one of these mornings while we were waiting, shivering, in the corridor, that yet another page in the Bible leapt into life for me. He hung naked on the cross. I had not known—I had not thought. . . . The paintings, the carved crucifixes showed at the least a scrap of cloth. But this, I suddenly knew, was the respect and reverence of the artist. But oh—at the time itself, on that other Friday morning—there had been no reverence. No more than I saw in the faces around us now. I leaned toward Betsie, ahead of me in line. Her shoulder blades stood out sharp and thin beneath her
...more
and I leaned down to make out Betsie’s words, “. . . must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been here.”
