This Is What the Past Is for!

“This is what the past is for! Every experience that God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.” Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

This is the quote that Mr. H— used in our staff devotions this week to preface his comments about a very difficult situation in his life when he was a young man—and he hasn’t been a young man for some time. I guess we all have events in our pasts that we so wish had not been or were not, whether by our own hands or those of another.

It’s been many years since I’ve read The Hiding Place, but one thing I remember about it was how quite ordinary Corrie ten Boom was. She’d lie at the drop of a hat to procure what she needed to protect and provide for herself and others. I don’t see myself as being one ounce more spiritual, and I think at the time she was so fearful and the terror so concrete that it surely seemed her the only relief would have been in the welcoming arms of death—yet she carried on. What else was there to do?

I’m certain she could not have envisioned the peace, the safety, and the notoriety that awaited her in the future—or even how quickly her terror was to turn to thanksgiving.

Perhaps it was the years that followed—years of introspection and eventually forgiveness that made an ordinary person—extraordinary after all. Some of the kindest, gentlest people I know have persevered through the intense fires of pain. Could it be that very pain which has made them so?

Therefore, even as the fear grips you, take heart: We peer through eyes that see so little of what’s ahead.

“This is what the past is for! Every experience that God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for the future that only He can see.”