“There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still.” This is the message of The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, a book set in Nazi occupied Holland during World War II. It is a story of God’s love conquering evil.
Corrie and her family are devout Christians who give refuge to Jews during the Nazi occupation. For years, Corrie leads an underground ring and safe house until a fellow Dutchman betrays her to the Gestapo. After a raid of their home, the Gestapo arrests the whole family along with 35 other underground workers. The Jews manage to reach the hiding place built into the wall of the Ten Boom house and, miraculously, are never discovered. Corrie’s father dies in prison ten days later, and after many months in solitary confinement, Corrie is reunited with her sister, Betsie, and both are sent to the Ravensbruck death camp in Germany.
It is at Ravensbruck that Corrie and Betsie experience a “pit so deep” and learn that their hiding place is the Lord Jesus. They trust God through it all never doubting His goodness. When Corrie witnesses the diabolical viciousness of the Nazis, she struggles with why God would allow such atrocities. She remembers a lesson her father taught her when she was young. While on a train trip together, Corrie asked him what “sexsin” was-a term she read in a poem at school. He didn’t say anything right away but turned, picked up his heavy suitcase and asked her to carry it for him. Corrie staggered under the weight, “But Father, it is too heavy for me!”
“Exactly, my child, and what kind of father would I be if I asked you to carry such a heavy burden? Some knowledge is too heavy for children as well. This knowledge I will carry for you until you are old enough to bear it.” Corrie never forgot what her father taught her that day and when she saw people brutally murdered, left to die, innocents suffering and the slaughtering of people like animals, she let her Heavenly Father bear the burden that was too heavy for her and would whisper, “Will you carry this too, Lord Jesus?”
Betsie taught Corrie to thank God for all things – even fleas – and to trust that God works all things for our good. When they discovered that their new quarters were infested with fleas, Betsie suggested thanking God for them. Corrie found herself doing as Betsie said, but in her heart she knew Betsie was wrong. How could God expect them to thank Him for fleas? But Betsie was adamant. “’Give thanks in all circumstances,’” she quoted. “It doesn’t say, ‘in pleasant circumstances.’ Fleas are part of this place where God has put us.” Later, Betsie and Corrie were given an opportunity to minister to the women of the camp and hold Bible studies while knitting socks for the Germans. They seemed to have almost no supervision and were free to share the gospel and many drank in the Words of Life. They would later find out that no guard was willing to come into the barracks because of the fleas!
Throughout the horrors of the camp, Betsie especially was convinced that when they were free, they were to tell people what they had learned there. “They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been here.” Although Betsie does not survive Ravensbruck, Corrie is released because of a clerical error. She would later return to Ravensbruck and discover that all women in her age group were sent to the gas chambers one week later. Corrie takes Betsie’s message to all the hurting and scarred people in postwar Europe. “There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still.” In the ensuing years, she opens rehabilitation homes for those who suffered in the concentration camps, a place to find healing in their own time and way. She turned her home over to NSBers, Dutchmen who collaborated with the Nazis. Corrie believed they were now suffering their own hell and needed healing too. In an extraordinary gesture of love, Corrie traveled to Germany and transformed an old concentration camp into a rehabilitation home for homeless and starving Germans in need of love.
The Hiding Place demonstrates that God’s love is deeper than any wound or any circumstance; that a Sovereign God is in control no matter what it may seem. Their story encourages us to forgive, to love and to learn from our journey. It teaches us that, no matter how deep the pit, He is deeper still.
