Deep Thoughts...

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Sometimes, I just need a little healthy perspective on my life and my "persecutions." I weep as I read writings from The Hiding Place...and not because it brings me down...but because it encourages me to go beyond my peaceful, little comfort zone, to be thankful for so many freedoms, and to stop my incessant whining to God that He is not enough for me. He takes it personally...as well He should!

"Fridays--the recurrent humiliation of medical inspection. The hospital corridor in which we waited was unheated and a fall chill had settled into the walls. Still we were forbidden even to wrap ourselves in our own arms, but had to maintain our erect, hands-at-sides position as we filed slowly past a phalanx of grinning guards.

"How there could have been any pleasure in the sight of these stick-thin legs and hunger-bloated stomachs I could not imagine. Surely there is no more wretched sight than the human body unloved and uncared for.

"Nor could I see the necessity for the complete undressing: when we finally reached the examining room a doctor looked down each throat, another--a dentist presumably--at our teeth, a third in between each finger. And that was all. We trooped again down the long, cold corridor and picked up our X-marked dresses at the door.

"But it was one of these mornings while we were waiting, shivering in the corridor, that yet another page in the Bible leapt into life for me.

"He hung naked on the cross.

"...The paintings, the carved crucifixes showed at least a scrap of cloth. But this, I suddenly knew, was the respect and reverence of the artist. But oh--at the time itself, on that other Friday morning--there had been no reverence. No more than I saw in the faces around us now.

"'Betsie, they took His clothes too.'

"'Ahead of me I heard a little gasp. 'Oh, Corrie. And I never thanked Him...'