All Things Supercinski

The Hiding Place is my all-time favorite book. I have read it at least 5 times in the past five years, most recently on our trip to Colorado. Each time that I read it, I am encouraged and challenged by the faith and compassion of the Ten Boom family, and reminded of how powerful our God is.

This auto-biography accounts the story of Corrie Ten Boom and her sister Betsie, both single women in their fifties living with their father who runs a watch shop in the front of their house. As the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands begins and the persecution of the Jews in their city intensifies, the Ten Booms begin to providing places of escape and housing scores of Jews during their months of service. Eventually, they are discovered and sent to a concentration camp along with their father who is in his eigthies.

Their tale is suspenseful and moving; once you start reading, it is difficult to put it down. The sisters endured much at the hands of the Nazis–isolation, cold, hunger, disease and beatings, but they never became embittered and grew in their love for Jesus and desire to minister to those around them, including their guards. During one of their weekly “medical inspections” where they were forced to stand in a room, naked, and inspected by the guards, she writes,

“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 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 blue-mottled skin. “Betsie, they took His clothes too.” Ahead of me I heard a little gasp, “Oh, Corrie. And I never thanked Him…”

This book is full of accounts such as these–beautiful and true stories of seeing suffering rightly and growing closer to God through them. The Ten Boom sisters remind me of Romans 5:

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

I encourage you to read it. This is truly a beautiful story of forgiveness, compassion and loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you. Corrie ten Boom is a true heroine of the faith, and hopefully she will inspire you toward faith in the same God who protected and sustained her.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 10:07 am and is filed under Books, Radio, Film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.