Lessons In Love

I have been reading The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. She relates several different memories that stood out to her through her childhood and even into her early twenties, that the Lord brought back to her even before the German occupation of Holland. She said that the Lord was preparing her for the test of imprisonment and Ravensbruck through these things.

Two stories stood out to me where she learned important lessons about the love of God. The first was after the only young man she had ever cared about became engaged to another, because his family had long planned and wished him to marry into a wealthy family. As she lay across her bed, weeping, her father came into her room to talk with her.

" 'Corrie, 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 the love so that it stops hurting. But then, of course, part of us dies, too. Or, Corrie, we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.
'God loves Karel - even more than you do - and if you will 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."

The second memory about love was after Mrs. Ten Boom had a cerebral hemorrhage that affected her limbs (eventually she could move around on her own) and her speech. With the exception of 'yes', 'no', and 'Corrie,' she could not speak.

"It was astonishing, really, the quality of life she was able to lead in that crippled body, and watching her during the three years of her paralysis, I made another discovery about love.
Mama's love had always been the kind that acted itself out with soup pot and sewing basket. But now that these things were taken away, the love seemed as whole as before. She sat in her chair at the window and loved us. She loved the people she saw in the street - and beyond: her love took in the city, the land of Holland, the world. And so I learned that love is larger than the walls that shut it in."