Reflecting on "The Hiding Place" by Corrie Ten Boom
Corrie Ten Boom was an ordinary woman, living an ordinary life in Holland working in her father’s ordinary watch shop. She spent her days doing bookkeeping and repairing broken watches alongside her father and her sister Betsie. She grew up in an ordinary home with an ordinary family. Yet in all of this, she looked back and saw as an older woman how God was preparing even her young heart for a very unordinary and difficult life ahead of her.
In her book The Hiding Place, Corrie recounts her life and how God led her to hide Jews in her home from the Nazis during World War II. She tells the story of hearing footsteps running into her room and watching the panicked Jews take cover in the secret room within her bedroom. She recounts the night the authorities bursted into her room and arrested her, and how she was transported to a cold prison and eventually a concentration camp.
But it's more than a retelling of a sad and terrifying story. It's more than a story of mourning the tragic realities of the world during World War II. This book is a true story dripping in hope and faith that could only be breathed into a person’s heart by God himself. It’s a story of learning to love—to lay down our lives for the needy and the hated alike. It’s a story of the gospel—not Corrie—overcoming the deepest, thorniest pit.
After reading a book like Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place, we can often feel a draping of guilt laid over our hearts. Why aren’t I doing great things like that for God? Why aren’t I out serving others in such selfless and grand ways? Why aren’t I out spreading the love of the gospel through word and deed to the hurting, the homeless, and the hated?
But I don’t believe guilt was ever Corrie’s intention in writing her book. I don’t think she wanted to instill guilt in our hearts that we aren’t doing enough or to guilt others into doing the exact same work she was called to do.
Rather, Corrie’s intention is one she took from her sister before her death in the concentration camp: “... we 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.”¹ What Corrie desires to show us in her book is that God is greater than any suffering we walk through, that the love and grace of his gospel permeates even the darkest places, like a Nazi concentration camp.
And what should that incite in us? How should a story such as this work in our hearts?
Rather than making us wonder why we aren’t out doing more, what if it led us to consider how we could share that same message, with the same fervor and joy, in our current callings? What if as a mom I sought to serve my child with joy despite his lack of gratitude? What if as a wife I loved my husband like Christ has loved me even when it was hard? What if as someone who has been deeply wounded by others I sought to forgive them as Christ has forgiven me?
So often we think of the faith of heroes such as Corrie Ten Boom and think we need the same kind of challenging arena to truly live for Christ. But that’s not the case. God has placed us each in a specific location, at a specific time, with specific circumstances and called us to believe his gospel, live in obedience to him, and spread the good news. God can produce the same kind of faith and joy in each of his children no matter where he has placed them.
Corrie Ten Boom served within the places God placed her. She started by serving the scared Jews who arrived at her door. Then she served the women in prison with her by giving out pieces of her Bible. When in the concentration camp, she preached the gospel to the women around her. And once out of the concentration camp she served many by helping them recover from the horrors of the war and concentration camps and sharing her message of hope as God gave her opportunity.
What opportunity has God put you in? What people has he placed around you? Maybe like Corrie, you’re single and God has placed it on your heart to do a ministry of hospitality to those in need. Or maybe you’re a mom and that doesn’t seem feasible—instead he’s called you to love the single mom next door who hates Christianity. Or maybe you’re a new wife still waiting for children and you use your time to serve in children’s or women’s ministry.
Whatever our calling, we can all take away the same message from the life of Corrie Ten Boom: Set your eyes on eternity, on Christ himself, because he is all you need. Find your contentment and joy in him, that whether in want or in plenty, you may rejoice in him. And find the strength to love the hurting, the homeless, and the hated from the One who is the source of perfect love.
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The Hiding Place, p. 204.
