A cheerful heart is good medicine.
—Proverbs 17:22
In The Hiding Place Corrie ten Boom introduces us to Bep, a bitter old woman who had come to live with them. Bep constantly compares the flaws of the ten Booms to the perfection of the Wallers, with whom she had previously lived.
Corrie asks mama why Bep has to live here where she is miserable, instead of with the Wallers where she had been happy.
“Corrie,” said mama, “Bep has been just as happy here with us—no more and no less—than she was anywhere else.”
She explains that the ten Booms are worse than the Wallers; the Wallers were worse than the van Hooks where Bep had formerly lived; and the van Hooks were worse than the …
“Happiness isn’t something that depends on our surroundings, Corrie. It’s something we make inside ourselves.”
Bitterness and happiness
can’t reside in the same heart.