Sunday, June 20, 2010

Fathers

Corrie Ten Boom, a Christian woman who was raised in Holland and spent the last two years of World War II in a Nazi concentration camp (because she and her family were hiding Jews in their home), said "My security was assured in many ways as a child. Every night I would go to the door of my room in my nightie and call out ‘Papa, I’m ready for bed.’ He would come to my room and pray with me before I went to sleep. I can always remember that he took time with us and would tuck the blankets around my shoulders very carefully. With his own characteristic precision, he would put his hand gently on my face and say, ‘Sleep well, Corrie. I love you.’’’ Those are three powerful words. We are stingy with those. Don’t be stingy with those words. We need to hear those words every day.

"'Sleep well, Corrie, I love you.' I would be very, very still because I thought that if I moved I might somehow lose the touch of his hand. I wanted to feel it until I fell asleep. Many years later in a concentration camp in Germany I sometimes remembered the feeling of my father’s hand on my face when I was lying on a wretched dirty mattress in that dehumanizing prison. I would say, ‘Lord, let me feel your hand upon me. May I creep under the shadow of your wings.’ In the midst of that suffering was my Heavenly Father’s security."

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