Blogging Book Club Review Post

Okay, so I picked a book a lot of you had read already, you can still leave your thoughts if you'd like though.

Because we have unlimited funds for this blogging book club, I decided for this book club party review post we are flying to Europe. We'll visit World War II sites and visit the Hiding Place Museum in Holland. We'll discuss the book in flight while enjoying our peanuts and ginger ale.

I love good books that have a good message, and inspire me - this book did not let me down. I expected this book to be about Corrie ten Boom and how great she was helping the Jews escape, and what great faith she had. Though, the message I thought to be the strongest in this book was really about Corrie learning from her sister Betsie. For, Betsie was an amazing person loving unconditionally, and she had such great faith.

On the night World War II arrived in Holland, Corrie and Betsie had leaped from bed at the sound of explosions coming from outside, and they knelt to pray together,

Betsie and I knelt down by the piano bench. For what seemed hours we prayed for our country, for the dead and injured tonight, for the Queen. And then, incredibly, Betsie began to pray for the Germans, up there in the planes, caught in the fist of the giant evil loose in Germany. I looked at my sister kneeling beside me in the light of burning Holland. "Oh Lord, " I whispered, "listen to Betsie, not me, because I cannot pray for those men at all." (p.79)

It was the end of a long day of standing, marching and waiting to get into the bunkers of another camp,

"Betsie!" I wailed, "how long will it take?"

"Perhaps a long, long time. Perhaps many years. But what better way could there be to spend our lives?"

I turned to stare at her. "Whatever are you talking about?"

"These young women. That girl back at the bunkers. Corrie if people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love! We must find the way, you and I, no matter how long it takes..."

She went on, almost forgetting in her excitement to keep her voice to a whisper, while I slowly took in the fact that she was talking about our guards. I glanced at the matron seated at the desk ahead of us. I saw a gray uniform and a visored hat; Betsie saw a wounded human being.

And I wondered, not for the first time, what sort of person she was, this sister of mine... what kind of road she followed while I trudged beside her on the all-too-solid earth. (p. 188)

In another part of the book, Betsie and Corrie moved into new barracks at Ravensbruck, an extermination camp for women, and they had been reading the Bible (they were able to keep one hidden almost the whole time they were in these camps and read it and share it with those around them) and they read in First Thessalonian that they need to give thanks in all circumstances,

"That's it, Corrie! That's His answer. 'Give thanks in all circumstances!' That's what we can do. We can start right now to thank God for every single thing about this new barracks!"

I stared at her, than around me at the dark, foul-aired room.

"Such as?" I said.

"Such as being assigned her together."

I bit my lip. "Oh yes, Lord Jesus!"

"Such as what you're holding in your hands."

I looked down at the Bible. "Yes! Thank You, dear Lord, that there was no inspection when we entered here! Thank You for all the women, here in this room, who will meet You in these pages."

"Yes," said Betsie. "Thank you for the very crowding here. Since we're packed so close, that many more will hear!" She looked at me expectantly. "Corrie!" she prodded.

"Oh, all right. Thank You for the jammed, crammed, stuffed, packed, suffocating crowds."

"Thank You," Betsie went on serenely, "for the fleas and for-"

The fleas! This was too much. "Betsie, there's no way even God can make me grateful for a flea."

"Give thanks in all circumstances," she quoted. "It doesn't say '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. (p.210)

A little while later Corrie returned to her barracks after a days work at the camp to find Betsie's eyes twinkling,

"You're looking extraordinarily pleased with yourself," I told her.

"You know we've never understood why we had so much freedom in the big room," she said. (She would take the Bible in there and read while others worked because she knitted so fast and would reach her quota so quickly.) "Well - I've found out."

That afternoon, she said, there'd been confusion in her knitting group about sock sizes and they'd asked the supervisor to come and settle it.

"But, she wouldn't. She wouldn't step through the door and neither would the guards. And you know why?"

Betsie could not keep the triumph for her voice: "Because of the fleas! That's what she said, 'That place is crawling with fleas!'"

My mind rushed back to our first hour in this place. I remembered Betsie's bowed head, remembered her thanks to God for creatures I could see no use for. (p. 220)

Corrie eventually was assigned to work in this big room with Betsie, and she described it as the most "joyous weeks" while in Ravensbruck. They shared the Bible with the women in that room, and prayed together.

"And as we prayed, God spoke to us about the world after the war. It was extraordinary; in this place where whistles and loudspeakers took the place of decisions, God asked us what we were going to do in the years ahead." (p. 222)

Betsie had the answer, they were going to have a large home where people who had been damaged by concentration-camp life would come until they felt ready to live again in the normal world again. Betsie would describe this house very specifically, as if she had been there before.

In one of their last conversations before Betsie died, she was telling Corrie about the home they were going to have and the work that they had to do together, and Betsie talked about the people that would come would plant flowers and garden,

"It will be so good for them... watching things grow. People can learn to love, from flowers..."

I knew by now which people she meant. The German people.

"... It's ready and waiting for us... such tall, tall windows! The sun is streaming in." Betsie told her. (p.226)

Betsie died in camp, and after the war, when Corrie had been home a while someone approached her about using their home for Corries efforts. Corrie went to check out the house,

I didn't answer. I was staring up at the gabled roof and the leaded windows. Such tall, tall windows....

"Are there-" my throat was dry. "Are there inlaid floors inside..."

She then asked the lady if there were the other same features that Betsie had described to her back in the concentration camp.

Mrs. Bierens de Haan looked at me in surprise. "You've been here then! I don't recall-"

"No," I said, "I heard about it from-"

I stopped. How could I explain what I did not understand?

"From someone who's been here," she finished simply, not understanding my perplexity.

"Yes," I said "From someone who's been here."

I loved this book. There are so many great messages and stories in this book, I didn't even scratch the surface, I may blog about some more of them some other time.

I just loved the example of these two Ten Boom sisters. Had I been placed in this situation, I know I would not have been able to look at things so positively as Betsie did, and see the good in even her prison guards.

If we were all only a little more like Betsie and Corrie Ten Boom...