Slipping from this life earlier this year at 100 years of age, Miep Gies was truly a hero. Along with her husband and some friends, she had provided food for the Frank family and others as they hid from the German Gestapo above the Frank’s family business for two years. On the day that the authorities arrived to take away all eight people who had been in hiding, Gies was sitting at her desk in the Frank’s office. While this alone was sufficient to put her in great danger, she chose later to go to the Gestapo headquarters to try to purchase the prisoners’ release. She was unsuccessful in this attempt.

Miep Gies would not see Anne Frank again, but she was able to present her diary to Otto–Anne’s father upon his return from Auschwitz. She presented it to him on the occasion when he learned of his daughters’ deaths. She shared, “here is your daughter Anne’s legacy to you.” After the second printing, Gies finally was able to read the diary. She was not reading a story about someone’s life, she was reading about this little girl that she had known, identified with, and protected. (HT)

Gies was a hero for a some very basic reasons. She cared deeply. She acted courageously. Eloquent writing or speech would have done nothing to aid the Frank family in hiding for two years. But putting her life in danger on a daily basis to find, buy, and at times barter for food, she was a constant, faithful hero.

I am reminded of the heroes that are mentioned in Hebrews 11. Yes, several are named with brief accounts of their story shared. But for so, so many they are listed as the faithful–the heroes. Some of these were tortured; some “were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword…the world was not worthy of them.” These were people of action. Talking about being faithful was not enough. They lived it out daily through to the end.

May we be a generation of heroes….