The Hiding Place Book Review

What do you do when you feel like doing nothing?  You read a whole book in one or two days.

Call me a bookworm (because I am), but to me, there’s almost nothing that compares with snuggling up and reading a book.  Especially if it’s raining outside.

Yup.

I recently read Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place this weekend.  It’s a true story of Corrie and her family during World War 2 and the secret underground work the Ten Boom family became involved in.

I’ve read this book several times before, but reading it for the 4th time (or somewhere around there…I can’t remember how many times I’ve read it), a few important things stood out to me.

First, the family’s unshakable faith.

First, no matter what was happening.  When the Germans raided their home with 3 underground workers and 4 Jews hiding in their secret room.  When Corrie was beaten brutally because she didn’t tell the soldier where they were hidden.  When she and her sister, Betsie, were treated cruelly in the concentration camps where Betsie eventually died.  They always had faith. Their most treasured possession, above food and medicine, was their Bible with which they ran a Bible study for the women they were imprisoned with.

On many occasions, they were able to sneak their Bible past guards and inspections.  It was a great reminder to me that God is powerful above all else!

Second, is how Corrie (with the inspiration of her sister), was able to take the setback of prison and cruelty and turn it into a great victory with the legacy she has left behind through her teaching, her writing, and her kindness.

Corrie started rehabilitation centers for post-concentration-camp victims as well as ex-guards, wrote several books, and was in demand as a speaker all over the world.  From the time she was released from the prison camp (at about age 53) to age 91, she never stopped proclaiming the love of God, and his forgiveness, everywhere she went.

Now that is a life fully lived.

What she went through was absolutely horrific, but the testimony that came from it was priceless.

Reading this, it was sometimes hard to remember that it actually happened.  That people were actually hunted, and that people were really that brutal, but also that people could be kind in the midst of such hardship and pain.

All in all, The Hiding Place is an amazing book, showing us how God can work even in the bleakest of times.

 

Until next time,

Hope Frances