"His will is our hiding place"

Corrie Ten Boom, 1915

A friend recently lent me the book, "The Hiding Place". It is one of those biographies that I've been wanting to get to for a number of years now but had not found the opportunity to pick it up. The history surrounding World War II has always fascinated me, and specifically the stories coming out of the events of the holocaust. Perhaps it is because for me, as a believer, it is more than just a history of some horrible things done to a particular group of people; it has a deeper root in an understanding of Satan's desire to thwart the work and promises of the Lord and of the Lord's prevailing power and gracious intervention throughout it all. As we look at the whole of this historical account some may ask, God's gracious intervention? What are you talking about? Are you saying God was intervening and all this still happened? Yes, God was very present and very involved. Corrie Ten Boom's story is just one small proof of His gracious involvement.

When reading biographies I find I often come away with another hero who has reached a reserved pedestal in my mind. I found Corrie's story much different. In it she shared about the circumstances she found herself in, but not without sharing about what the Lord had taught her through each and every one of them. She wrote of her work in the underground in Holland where many Jews came through the doors and found hope and a refuge in her family home, but not without writing about how the Lord very specifically preserved that work. And she talked of her time of imprisonment, but not without talking about how the Lord continually sustained her and, yes, even blessed her there. It is not that she wasn't a great woman, she just wasn't a great woman apart from the work of the Lord in and through her; and on every page of the book she seemed to be acknowledging that. The glory of God resounds in her story.

It caused me to think, when I tell my story who gets the pedestal? The Lord or myself?