Adopt-a-Grandpa

I just finished reading Corrie ten Boom's biographies (3 of them) and have found that she is, indeed, my hero.

My first exposure to her and her life was through the movie, The Hiding Place. I was horrified as I watched this true story of her family hiding the Jews in Holland and then being taken to Nazi concentration camps where they were forced into hard labor, beaten, and hardly had enough food to live on. Many of Corrie's family members died in those camps, but miraculously Corrie survived and was released one week before all the women her age were exterminated in her camp.

Corrie went on to travel the world telling anyone who would listen that God's love is deeper than the darkest place. She knew. She had been there.

Corrie also lived out and preached forgiveness, setting up places for former Nazis to heal, receive forgiveness and be made whole. Corrie even had opportunities to forgive former guards that had wounded or humiliated she and her sister. A true example of walking the talk.

But when I read the story, The Hiding Place, I was relieved to find that it begins in Corrie's childhood in the Beje. The crumbling old home in Haarlem, Holland where her father worked in his watch shop and every aunt she had came to give her two cents on Corrie's life.

What I loved to read about the most was Casper ten Boom, Corrie's father. He was this wise old man, kind to everyone he met, treating beggar and dignitary with the same respect, always believing in the good within people and trying to draw it out with his own goodness. Brave, as he helped to hide Jews in Nazi occupied Holland, dying in prison for this act. The Nazis had wanted to release him because he was so old. They told him they would set him free if he promised not to cause any more problems. Casper said that he could never turn away anyone who needed help, and he never did. Not the 11 foster children whom he helped raise in his home, not the men who came begging for work or the families who came to the back kitchen door, knowing that the ten Booms always had soup going on the stove in case they needed it, and certainly not God's chosen people, the Jews.

And Papa ten Boom was a fount a wisdom. Every day reading to his household from the scriptures, giving patient, thoughtful replies to his childrens' questions, seeing what was coming when Hitler gained power.

Reading about him made me wish I could have been one of his foster children. To sit at his feet and hear the ticking of watches inside his coat, to listen to his sure, steady voice read from the Bible he loved, and to be able to ask him so many questions about why life is the way it is and how it got this way. Maybe he wouldn't have all the answers, but I know he'd have some.

It got me thinking. I know we have big brother/big sister programs, why not Adopt-a-Grandpa? I thought I could start scouring nursing homes for old men who still like to talk, have something to say in this world. Set them up with people who want to listen.

Or maybe have an eharmony-grandpa. Seeking wise old man who likes to tell stories, answer questions, with warm smile and preferably non-diabetic (I like to bake for people).

I don't know. The more I think about it, the more I think I'm just talking about God, the Father of Fathers. Someday I'll see his beautiful face, I like to picture it a little worn with years like a grandpa, but I don't think God gets very worn. But I'll see him and if I'm not flat on my face in awe, I'll ask him some questions, and maybe just maybe I'll understand his answers.

And then he'll give me a hug. I hope.