Corrie ten Boom's Hidden Room of Mercy

In February 1944, the Gestapo raided the Beje, the narrow Dutch watchmaker's house where Corrie ten Boom and her family had been hiding Jewish refugees. Corrie was arrested, stripped of everything familiar, and transported to Scheveningen prison, then to the horrors of Ravensbruck concentration camp. She had every reason to let bitterness consume her.

Yet in her writings, Corrie described something remarkable about those darkest months. Each morning, she would silently lift her soul to God — not with eloquent prayers, but with raw, trembling trust. "I never knew that God was all I needed," she later wrote, "until God was all I had." She clung to the promises she had memorized as a girl in her father's shop, promises about paths made known and covenant love that never fails.

What strikes us most is what came after the war. When Corrie encountered one of her former Ravensbruck guards at a speaking engagement in Munich, she felt her hand freeze at her side. But she had spent years asking the Lord to teach her His ways, and in that moment, she reached out and offered forgiveness.

The Psalmist writes, "To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul." This is not passive resignation. It is Corrie ten Boom extending her hand to an enemy — an act only possible because she had first, daily, extended her whole life upward to the Almighty, who is faithful to lead the humble in what is right.