Devin Best > Devin's Quotes

“It grew harder and harder. Even within these four walls there was too much misery, too much seemingly pointless suffering. Every day something else failed to make sense, something else grew too heavy. Will You carry this too, Lord Jesus? But as the rest of the world grew stranger, one thing became increasingly clear. And that was the reason the two of us were here. Why others should suffer we were not shown. As for us, from morning until lights-out, whenever we were not in ranks for roll call, our Bible was the center of an ever-widening circle of help and hope. Like waifs clustered around a blazing fire, we gathered about it, holding out our hearts to its warmth and light. The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the word of God. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”
― Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

“At last either Betsie or I would open the Bible. Because only the Hollanders could understand the Dutch text, we would translate aloud in German. And then we would hear the life-giving words passed back along the aisles in French, Polish, Russian, Czech, back into Dutch. They were little previews of heaven, these evenings beneath the lightbulb.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

“What feeds the soul matters as much as what feeds the body.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“And suddenly I realized that this too was a message, a last wordless communication among neighbors. For I, too, had a hiding place when things were bad. Jesus was this place, the Rock cleft for me. I pressed a finger to the tiny crevice.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“If you want converts, surely one normal person is worth all the half-wits in the world!” “May I tell you the truth Lieutenant Rahms? The truth, Sir, is that 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 scripture I learn that God values us not for our strength or our brains, but simply because He has made us. Who knows, in His eyes, a half-wit may be worth more than a watchmaker. Or a Lieutenant.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

“Willem didn’t try to change people, just to serve them.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“There are no ‘ifs’ in God’s world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety—Oh Corrie, let us pray that we may always know it!”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“It says,” I began slowly, “that a Light has come into this world, so that we need no longer walk in the dark. Is there darkness in your life, Lieutenant?”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?” he said. I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning. “It’s too heavy,” I said. “Yes,” he said. “And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look into your heart and find the strength you need—just in time.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“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.” And so we stood between piers of bunks and gave thanks for fleas. But this time I was sure Betsie was wrong.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us, Corrie, because we have been here.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“There are no “ifs” in God’s kingdom. I could hear her soft voice saying it. 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.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“Wherever she was, at work, in the food line, in the dormitory, Betsie spoke to those around her about His nearness and His yearning to come into their lives. As her body grew weaker, her faith seemed to grow bolder. And sick call was "such and important place, Corrie! Some of these people are at the threshold of heaven!”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

“Betsie,' I whispered, "what can we do for these people? Afterward I mean. Can't we make a home for them and care for them and love them?'
'Corrie, I pray every day that we will be allowed to do this! To show them that love is greater!'
And it wasn't until I was gathering twigs later in the morning that I realized that I had been thinking of the feeble-minded, and Betsie of their persecutors.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

“My job was simply to follow His leading one step at a time, holding every decision up to Him in prayer.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“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.'
I did not know, as I listened to my father's footsteps winding back down the stairs, that he had given me more than the key to this hard moment. I did not know that he had put in my had the secret that would open far darker rooms that this--places where there was not, on a human level, anything to love at all.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“Unseen by either of us, Father had appeared in the doorway. “Give the child to me, Corrie,” he said. Father held the baby close, his white beard brushed its cheek, looking into the little face with eyes as blue and innocent as the baby’s own. At last he looked up at the pastor. “You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honor that could come to my family.” The pastor turned sharply on his heels and walked out of the room.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“Love. How did one show it? How could God Himself show truth and love at the same time in a world like this? By dying. The answer stood out for me sharper and chillier than it ever had before that night: the shape of a Cross etched on the history of the world.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“In 1959 Corrie was part of a group that visited Ravensbruck, which was then in East Germany, to honor Betsie and the 96,000 other women who died there. There Corrie learned that her own release had been part of a clerical error; one week later all women her age were taken to the gas chamber. When I heard Corrie speak in Darmstadt in 1968, she was 76, still traveling ceaselessly in obedience to Betsie’s certainty that they must “tell people.” Her work took her to 61 countries, including many “unreachable” ones on the other side of the Iron Curtain. To whomever she spoke—African students on the shores of Lake Victoria, farmers in a Cuban sugar field, prisoners in an English penitentiary, factory workers in Uzbekistan—she brought the truth the sisters learned in Ravensbruck: Jesus can turn loss into glory. John and I made some of those trips with her, the only way to catch this indefatigable woman long enough to”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“God loves Karel—even more than you do—and if you ask Him, He will give you His love for this man, a love nothing can prevent, nothing destroy. Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way, Corrie, God can give us the perfect way.” I did not know, as I listened to Father’s footsteps winding back down the stairs, that he had given me more than the key to this hard moment. I did not know that he had put into my hands the secret that would open far darker rooms than this—places where there was not, on a human level, anything to love at all.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place