The Watchmaker's Hands That Held the World at Bay

In her memoir The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom recalls a childhood ritual that shaped her understanding of God. Every night in their narrow Haarlem house above the watch shop, her father Caspar would climb the stairs to her small bedroom. His large, steady hands — the same hands that repaired the tiniest watch mechanisms by day — would reach down to tuck the blankets snugly around her. Then he would lay his hand gently on her face. "Good night, Corrie. I love you."

She wrote that in those moments, she felt utterly safe. Nothing in the world could harm her.

Decades later, those same hands would tremble as Caspar sheltered Jewish families behind a secret wall in that very house. Arrested by the Nazis in 1944, he died ten days later in Scheveningen prison at eighty-four years old. Yet Corrie never forgot the paradox of her father — a man brave enough to defy an empire, yet tender enough to smooth the blankets over a frightened child each night.

Zephaniah 3:17 reveals this same breathtaking paradox in the heart of God. The Lord is "the Mighty Warrior who saves" — powerful enough to overthrow kingdoms and silence evil. Yet this same God "will take great delight in you" and "rejoice over you with singing." The hands that hold the galaxies in orbit are the very hands that reach down to quiet your restless heart tonight.