Corrie ten Boom and the Refuge That Held

When the Nazis occupied Holland in 1940, watchmaker Casper ten Boom and his daughter Corrie made a quiet, dangerous decision. They built a hidden room behind a false wall in their Haarlem home and began sheltering Jewish families from deportation. For two years, the Beje — as their narrow house was called — became a refuge for the hunted, a place where terrified people could finally exhale.

In February 1944, the Gestapo raided the house. Corrie and her family were arrested and sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp. Her father died ten days after his arrest. Her sister Betsie died in the camp that December. Yet even in that nightmare, Corrie later recalled moments of inexplicable peace — a smuggled Bible that sustained an entire barracks, Betsie whispering through cracked lips, "There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still."

Corrie survived. She spent the next thirty years traveling the world, telling anyone who would listen that the God who had been her refuge in Haarlem was the same God who held her in Ravensbruck.

Nahum 1:7 says, "The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him." This is not a promise that trouble will not come. It is the far greater promise that when trouble comes — and it will — the Almighty Himself becomes the hiding place. He does not merely offer shelter. He is the shelter.