God always sees the bigger picture

Dear Friends,
A set of photos came up on my phone recently. They were taken in 2018 when our family visited a small town in the Netherlands called Haarlem. We had decided to visit the historic home of Corrie Ten Boom (1892 1983) and her family.
For those who don’t know the story, the Ten Booms were a Christian family who, during World War 2, hid many Jewish people from the Nazis in their home above their jewellery shop. They then helped them to obtain documents and safe passage to allied countries. We were able to see and stand behind the ‘false wall’ that the family constructed in their house where the Jewish families would hide when anyone came to the door.

Sadly, after helping to save hundreds of Jewish people from the Nazis, the Ten Booms were eventually betrayed. The Nazis arrested them and they were all taken to concentration camps bringing upon themselves the very fate they had been helping their Jewish friends to escape.

Corrie and her sister Betsy were sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp. Betsy died there but, somehow, Corrie survived until the camp was liberated.

Corrie used the rest of her life to teach others about forgiveness, peace and God’s love from her experience under the Nazis. She wrote the book ‘The Hiding Place’ which was later televised. One of Corrie’s belongings still on display at the house was a woven tapestry depicting a crown. When you turned it over you could see the messy threads on the underside.

When Corrie was asked why God had allowed such terrible things to happen, she would often describe her own life as a tapestry. We humans often only see the messy underside of loose threads, life looks painful and confusing from our limited perspective. But God sees the other side a bigger picture that makes sense of our mess.

This is not a complete explanation of suffering and evil. But I do believe, as Corrie did, that in the end God can use both the good and the bad, the light and the darkness to weave something beautiful. He did that with Corrie’s life, and he can do it with ours.

Lucy