The Hiding Place

In the film Shadowlands, C.S. Lewis is speaking with one of his students who says, "We read to know we are not alone." When we read we often discover that someone else has been where we are. Someone else understands. We read because so often, we ourselves do not have the words to say what is written in our hearts. I think the same can be said for movies, art, dance, music, and theater. It is Thanksgiving time and this year I am grateful for artists, directors, actors, composers, musicians, dancers, and authors who give voice to the feelings I cannot express and paint the picture I cannot paint.

Brent recently suggested I read, The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom. Here are a few (okay, I got a little carried away... here are 19) phrases I love:

“Worrying is carrying tomorrow's load with today's strength- carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn't empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”

“Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you.”

“Happiness isn't something that depends on our surroundings...It's something we make inside ourselves.”

“You can never learn that Christ is all you need, until Christ is all you have.”

“Do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.”

“Don't bother to give God instructions; just report for duty.”

“Dear Jesus...how foolish of me to have called for human help when You are here.”

“There is no panic in Heaven! God has no problems, only plans.”

“There are no 'if's' in God's world. And no placess that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety - let us pray that we may always know it!”

“Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way . . . God can give us the perfect way.”

“If God has shown us bad times ahead, it's enough for me that He knows about them. That's why He sometimes shows us things, you know - to tell us that this too is in His hands.”

“God's viewpoint is sometimes different from ours - so different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things....In the Bible I learn that God values us not for our strength or our brains but simply because He has made us.”

“And our wise Father in heaven knows when we're going to need things too. Don't run out ahead of Him.”

“Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. 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. ”

“How often it is a small, almost unconscious event that makes a turning point.”

“Perhaps only when human effort had done it's best and failed, would God's power alone be free to work.”

“When I try, I fail.

When I trust, He succeeds.”

“All through the short afternoon they kept coming, the people who counted themselves Father's friends. Young and old, poor and rich, scholarly gentlemen and illiterate servant girls—only to Father did it seem that they were all alike. That was Father's secret: not that he overlooked the differences in people; that he didn't know they were there.”

“There are no 'ifs' in God's Kingdom. 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.”