The Hiding Place

I finished reading The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom, today, and not without a bit of conviction and tears along the way. And certainly not without marking up some good writing and worthy quotes.

- My sister Betsie, though seven years older than I, still had that slender grace that made people turn and look after her in the street. ... when Betsie put on a dress, something wonderful happened to it.

- ... head bald as a Holland cheese...

- Adventure and anguish, horror and heaven...

- Oh Father! Betsie! If I had known, would I have gone ahead? Could I have done the things I did? But how could I know? How could I imagine this white-haired man, called Opa - Grandfather - by all the children of Haarlem, how could I imagine this man thrown by strangers into a grave without a name? And Betsie, with her high lace collar and her gift for making beauty all around her, how could I picture this dearest person on earth to me standing naked before a roomful of men? In that room, on that day, such thoughts were not even thinkable.

- And so the shadow fell across us that winter afternoon in 1937, but it rested lightly. Nobody dreamed that this tiny cloud would grow until it blocked out the sky.

- I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do.

- Suddenly the organ music swelling from the open door was for us, the arm he offered me was the moon, and my gloved hand resting upon it the only thing that kept me from soaring right over the peaked rooftops of Haarlem.

- Black. Black as fear itself.

- ... and then, from deep in his throat, half-sung, half-pleaded, came the words of the ancient prophet, so feelingly and achingly that we seemed to hear the cry of the Exile itself.

- Thoughts were enemies.

- Even in the strict silence this human closeness was joy and strength. ... How rich is anyone who can simply see human faces!

- ... the next time I was permitted a shower I would take with me three of my Gospels. Solitary was teaching me that it was not possible to be rich alone.

- 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. Sometimes I would slip the Bible from its little sack with hands that shook, so mysterious had it become to me. It was new; it had just been written. I marveled sometimes that the ink was dry. I had believed the Bible always, but reading it now had nothing to do with belief. It was simply a description of the way things were - of hell and heaven, of how men act and how God acts. I had read a thousand times the story of Jesus' arrest - how soldiers had slapped Him, laughed at Him, flogged Him. Now such happenings had faces and voices.

- 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.

- ... bringing the message that joy runs deeper than despair.

Word collecting: shorn, wizened, woebegone