Telling Corrie’s Story
The Watchmaker’s Daughter sets out to tell what The Hiding Place left out, and it succeeds. Loftis intersperses accounts familiar to The Hiding Place readers with details of Allied and Nazi military tactics and espionage attempts as well as wartime experiences of Anne Frank and Audrey Hepburn, who both lived in the Netherlands at the time. Loftis includes Corrie’s post-war travel, as she told her family’s story in more than 60 countries, and a final section that tells what happened to several people during or after the war.
Millions of people have read the Ten Boom family story of courage and faithfulness during World War II as shared in the 1971 bestseller The Hiding Place. Corrie ten Boom, along with her father and sister, coordinated underground work during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, hiding Jews and other underground workers in their home. Larry Loftis’ The Watchmaker’s Daughter (William Morrow 2023) pulls together information from letters, journals, and books written by Ten Boom family members or their friends to tell about their underground activities and their faith even after Nazis arrested them.
The Watchmaker’s Daughter sets out to tell what The Hiding Place left out, and it succeeds.
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Making Excuses for Evil
This is not a political disagreement. It is evil incarnate. Evil must be recognized for what it is and eradicated. Every leader, soldier, and financial supporter of Hamas should be identified, hunted down, and executed. Every apologist and sympathizer for Hamas should be ashamed, publicly denounced, and removed from any position of government power and influence. This is what is right. It is what is just and necessary to protect the citizens of Israel, both Jews and Arabs.
Two people groups are at war in the Middle East. The conflict is longstanding and complicated by multiple generations, and centuries, of political, social, and religious history. Grievances are claimed by both sides. Arguments are made for the righteousness of each one’s cause and for the injustice of the other.
One of these groups is an organized nation. The other is an acknowledged terrorist organization. One side allows members of the opposing ethnic and religious group to live in their society, participate in their economy, and even serve in their parliament and government positions. The other is openly committed to eradicating their opponents from the earth, not just destroying the nation, but annihilating the people as an ethnic group. One side is charged with the “sin” of occupation and colonization. The other explicitly states their commitment to genocide.
Whenever there is war, there will be collateral damage, innocent casualties, and various atrocities. Even in the most just war, prosecuted according to the strictest standards of justice and martial ethics, innocent men, women, and children will be harmed, intentionally or unintentionally. In this conflict, one side works to limit collateral damage and casualties and is committed to punishing evil and injustice within its own ranks. The other side films the atrocities its soldiers commit and publishes them on official social media platforms, celebrating the horrors which are that organization’s ordinary means of warfare, not exceptional or regrettable departures from the standard.
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So It Is With Grace
If we are faithful, we should always examine ourselves to see what progress we’re making. If a lack of growth or progress doesn’t concern us, there is a bigger problem at play. But we shouldn’t be distraught over a perceived lack of growth—many times we recognize how much we’ve changed when we look back to who we were before Christ.
The growth of trees and plants takes place so slowly that it is not easily seen. Daily we notice little change. But, in course of time, we see that a great change has taken place. So it is with grace. (John Owen)
I am not where I thought I would be as a Christian today. When God saved me eight years ago, I intended to be more holy, more Christlike, more godly than I am now. But I’m not. Not by a long shot.
Sometimes I get too angry; other times I’m a little too impatient. On many occasions my sarcasm comes too natural and my cynicism springs forth too often. I don’t love my wife as I should and my love for the Lord wanes far too easily. In short, I’m less godly than I planned to be eight years in.
Wherever you are in your walk with Jesus—whether it’s been a month, a couple years, or decades—I imagine you feel the same way. We all do. We all get discouraged with our progress.
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Spiritual Orphans: Forgetting our Heavenly Father
There are believers who are always complaining of their circumstances: they are worked too hard, they are tried more than others, they have such a vexing family, they have such a demanding job, they have such financial losses, they have no end of things to vex, harass, and distress them! Complaining Christian, “Do you have a father?” If so, had your Father anything to do with fixing your lot? Did He place you where you are? Is He wise? Is He good? Has He ever told you, that all things shall work together for your good?
Standing at my window one day, while the cholera was raging in London, I saw two corpses carried by, followed by one little child, walking alone next to the coffins, with a few neighbors behind. That child was now an orphan. Both parents had been carried off by the pestilence. The sight of that child produced deep emotions, and awakened painful sympathy in my heart.
I was led to think of the sorrows and privations of orphanhood, and then of the happiness of the Lord’s people to whom Jesus has said, “I will not leave you as orphans.” A believer can never be an orphan! He has an ever-living, ever-loving, ever-present Father! But many of the Lord’s people do not realize this, therefore they do not live and act under its influence.
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