Morning Light in the Secret Annex

On February 23, 1944, fourteen-year-old Anne Frank climbed to the attic of 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam and peered out through the window. For nineteen months, she and seven others had lived in concealed rooms above her father Otto's former office, unable to go outside, barely able to move during business hours. Yet that afternoon, Anne looked past the rooftops at the pale blue sky and the bare chestnut tree in the courtyard below, its branches glistening. She recorded in her diary that as long as such beauty existed — sunshine, cloudless skies, the natural world — she could not be entirely sad.

This was not naivety. Anne knew the danger surrounding her. She had heard about Jewish neighbors being deported. She knew the Allied bombers flying overhead signaled a war far from over. In less than six months, the Gestapo would discover the Secret Annex, and Anne would die at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Yet this innocent girl chose to call beauty to mind when despair pressed close.

The prophet Jeremiah practiced the same discipline. Amid Jerusalem's devastation, he wrote: "His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23). He did not deny the ruins around him. He chose to remember something truer.

When your world narrows and hope feels reckless, look for the mercy God has set before you this morning. His faithfulness is not contingent on your circumstances. Like light through an attic window, it arrives — new, unbidden, and sufficient.