The Hiding Place

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.

When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.

And it was at that moment, as I stepped into the alley, that I knew what it was I was looking for. It was Betsie. It was Betsie I had missed every moment of every day since I ran to the hospital window and found that she had left Ravensbruck forever. It was Betsie I had thought to find back here in Haarlem, here in the watch shop and in the home sh

And yet . . . in a strange way, I was not home. I was still waiting, still looking for something.

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.

They placed the stretcher on the floor 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.”

The real sin I had been committing was not that of inching toward the center of a platoon because I was cold. 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.

Oh, this was the great ploy of Satan in that kingdom of his: to display such blatant evil that one could almost believe one’s own secret sins didn’t matter.

Betsie saw where I was looking and laid a bird-thin hand over the whip mark. “Don’t look at it, Corrie. Look at Jesus only.” She drew away her hand: it was sticky with blood.