last week i couldn't sleep and so i went to my trusty books for something to distract me. among my beautiful and prized bookshelves there are a handful of books that i haven't read yet. usually those books comprise of gifts, things i was given and either haven't gotten to yet or don't really ever plan on getting to. so, i started purusing and i came across on old yellow library copy of the hiding place by corrie ten boom. i'm not sure if that book is familiar to you- but if not: it's one woman's true accounting of how her family became involved in holland's underground during WWII, hiding jews so that they could find freedom. i was surprised i had it, because literally i can account for every single volume i have and here's one i didn't remember. i was also surprised because i had never read it and i am facinated by world war II and i usually devour everything i can get my hands on that's written about it. so i picked it up. i settled into my cozy bed and i readied myself to enter into the magic world of words.
i wish desperately i was a more talented writer. because the following post is not even going to scratch the surface of what this tiny little novel did for me.
i want to begin with: how does God love us? how can he love us when we are so intentionally cruel to each other? i consistantly had to put this book down and ask God to forgive me of my cruelty. as corrie wrote so simply of the pain she saw inflicted on her jewish neighbors i realized that we are capable of so much hurt. and that hurt shows up in small ways like a jab at our friends to make ourselves shinier but it also consists of this:
"how often it is a small, almost unconsious event that marks a turning point. as arrests of jews in the street became more frequent, i had begun picking up and delievering work for our jewish customers myself so that they would not have to venture into the center of town. and so one evening in the early spring of 1942 i was in the home of a doctor and his wife. they were a very old dutch family: the portraits on the walls could have been a textbook of holland's history. the heemstras and i were talking about the things that were discussed whenever a group of people got together in those days, rationing and the news from england, when down the stairs piped a childish voice: 'daddy! you didn't tuck us in!' dr. heemstras was on his feet in an instant. with an apology to his wife and me he hurried upstairs and in a minute we heard a game of hide-and-seek going and the laughter of two children. that was all. nothing had changed. mrs. heemstra continued with her recipe for stretching the tea with rose leaves. and yet everything was changed. for in that instant, reality broke through the numbness that had grown in me since the invasion. at any minute there might be a rap on this door. these children, this mother and father, might be ordered to the back of a truck" (pg. 74).
it's unimaginable the kind of suffering that we inflict upon each other. but there was another aspect of this book that wormed its way into my heart. corrie and her entire family willingly offered their lives to God. this wasn't signing up for a short-term mission trip where they could go somewhere safe and safely serve God. this wasn't proclaiming their faith in God while putting their own desires before everything else. it was a concious decision that death would be preferable to turning away from God's people. do i love my Jesus that much? do i love my neighbor that much?"dr. heemstra came back to the living room and the conversation rambled on. but under the words a prayer was forming in my heart: 'Lord Jesus, i offer myself to your people. in any way. any place. any time'" (pg. 74).
corrie and her family would end up hiding hundreds of jews. they eventually built a small room in her bedroom so that if they were ever raided they would have a chance to keep all the jews living with them from arrest. i posted pictures of the actual room at the top of the post. and they went about their lives. they took thousands, millions of risks and there were so many times when they were given the oppurtunity to stop. they could have climbed safe and warm into their beds and said to themselves, "we've done what we could. God would be proud. but it's just too dangerous now."
eventually they were caught and corrie and her family were arrested. they were all sent to prison. her father died there. her brother and one of her sisters were released, but corrie and her sister betsie were sent to a concentration camp. not because they were jewish. not because they were mentally or physically disabled or for any other insane reason the nazi's were sending people to the camps. because they loved. because they loved others more than they loved themselves. no, wait that's wrong- because they loved God more than even the air they were breathing.
betsie died in the concentration camp. and when corrie was finally released because of a clerical error she entered a world without her father. without her mother or sister. she lost everyone she cared about. she was broken physically and emotionally. she was scarred in ways that were just beginning to show themselves. but she was also gloriously whole. because she had done exactly what Christ did. she offered all she had to her Father. it wasn't much, but God used her small life to feed millions, including me.
i have no idea how to summarize in this post the mark the chapters of their imprisonment left on me. i feel like a completely different chelsea. i feel more lost and more found. i feel closer to my Lord. i feel like a bomb went off next to me and took pieces of my selfishness with it. i want to end with corrie's words on how desperately she clung to our Lord.
"the instant of dismissal we would mob the door of barracks 8, stepping on each other's heels in our eagerness to get inside, to shrink the world back to understandable proportions. it grew harder and harder. even within these four walls there was too much misery, too much seemingly pointless suffering. everyday something else failed to make sense, something else grew too heavy. 'will you carry this too, Lord Jesus?' 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 around 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? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecutionor famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.' i would look about us as betsie read, watching the light leap from face to face. more than conquerors.... it was not a wish. it was a fact. we knew it, we experienced it minute by minute- poor, hated, hungry. we are more than conquerors. not 'we shall be.' we are! life in ravensbruck took place on two separate levels, mutually impossible. one, the observable, external life, grew every day more horrible. the other, the life we lived with God, grew daily better, truth upon truth, glory upon glory" (pg. 194-195).
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