How's your attitude?

December 4, 2025

From Joseph Wamack

Anne Frank was a Jewish girl born in 1929 in Frankfurt Germany. In 1933, her family immigrated to Amsterdam to escape the Nazis. She lived with her parents and sister and led a normal life, until the Netherlands were invaded by the Nazis. Then her family found themselves caught in the horror of the Holocaust.

As persecutions against Jews increased, the family went into hiding in July 1942 in secret rooms above her father Otto’s office. They were given food and supplies by sympathetic workers of the firm Mr. Frank ran. They remained quiet during the day when business was open in the offices below. Her family, plus 4 others, hid for over two years from the Nazis, only moving about at night. Their only crime was being born Jewish.

One would think they would have gone crazy. One would think that as time went on, with more and more Jews taken to camps, that darkness, doom and dread would settle on them, especially a young 13-year-old girl trapped in an attic with no room.

Anne had received a diary for her 13th birthday, and during her two years of hiding, she wrote. Her words might have been full of dread, discouragement, and despair. But listen to what Anne wrote on July 15, 1944, after two full years of attic imprisonment, and the fear of Nazis and arrest outside the window.

It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals; they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.            It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I’ll be able to realize them!" - July 15, 1944

The last entry in her diary was August 1, 1944. On August 4, 1944, the Nazi Secret Police found them and arrested all 8 people. Somehow the SS was tipped off to the group hidden in the attic.

They were first sent to Auschwitz in Poland and later to Bergen-Belsen in Germany. A typhus epidemic spread that winter of 1944, killing thousands in the camp. Seven months after her arrest, Anne died of typhus.

Three months later the camp was liberated by the British. Anne’s father was the only one of the family who survived. He returned to Amsterdam to find that Anne’s diary, which had been found strewn on the attic floor when they were arrested, had been picked up and preserved by the office workers. Otto Frank made it his life’s work to share his daughter’s diary with the world until he died in 1980.

Today, Anne’s powerful words “in spite of everything, I believe that people are truly good at heart,” ring out and challenge us to see the good in this world. Yea, verily I say unto you, how we perceive and experience our world hinges greatly on our outlook.

How do you see the world? The single most important, significant decision you will make today is not what you eat or what you wear but your choice of attitude. How will you experience your world? Your outlook for this day is more important than your past, your education, your bank roll, your success or your failures. It is your attitude that keeps you going or cripples your progress. Your attitude fuels your fire or quenches your hopes. When your attitude is right, there is no barrier too high, no valley too deep, no dream too extreme, and no challenge too great. As we enter the holiday season, and then onward towards 2026, may we have a new attitude. All things can become new in Christ. Let our words, our actions and our attitude be full of holiday cheer and grateful hearts. Live to see the good in others.