When Corrie ten Boom travelled the world sharing her experiences, she would often speak with her head down. She appeared to be reading notes, but she was actually stitching a needlepoint design. When she would finish telling her story of the atrocities she suffered from the Nazis, she would reveal the needlepoint she had been working on. She would first show the back side, which was just a tangle of coloured threads with no distinct pattern. And she would say, ‘That’s how we see our lives. Sometimes it makes no sense.’ Then she would flip the needlepoint over to unveil the finished side. And she would say, ‘This is how God views your life, and someday we will have the privilege of seeing it from His point of view.’ Then she would end her talk with this poem written by Grant Colfax Tullar, a minister: ‘My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me; I cannot choose the colours, He worketh steadily. Oft times He weaveth sorrow and I, in foolish pride, forget He sees the upper, and I the underside. Not til the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly, will God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why. The dark threads are as needful in the Weaver’s skilful hand, as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned.’ Paul writes, ‘Now we see a dim reflection, as if we were looking into a mirror, but then we shall see clearly. Now I know only a part, but then I will know fully, as God has known me.’

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.