Embroidery

Originally posted on November 14, 2007 – by Andre Piet

On the Goedbericht site I have never made it a secret that I firmly believe God has made everything (and I mean everything) for His purpose. Proverbs 16:4 adds to this: “…even the wicked for the day of evil.” This was memorably expressed by the well-known author Corrie ten Boom, who was once imprisoned under inhumane conditions in the Ravensbrück concentration camp:

“God doesn’t make mistakes. Everything seems like a tangled piece of embroidery, senseless and terrible. But that’s the underside. One day we will see the topside, and then we will be amazed and give thanks.”

No conviction sustains a person so deeply in suffering as this one: knowing that there is Someone who allows nothing to happen unless it serves His purpose — even if that purpose is completely hidden from us. Precisely in such times, the awareness that there is Someone who directs everything in detail becomes an unshakable rock-solid foundation. If God is GOD, then He does not make mistakes. And therefore, nothing goes wrong. The darkness (= evil) serves the function of making the Light shine all the more brightly!

These reflections came to mind this morning as I read in the newspaper about the doctoral promotion earlier this month of Bettine Siertsema. To her own astonishment, she had to conclude in her dissertation “Out of the Depths” that most people in the concentration camps did not lose their faith in an almighty God, but were in fact strengthened in it. Raised in Reformed orthodoxy but now completely liberal in outlook, she had never expected to arrive at such a conclusion. She had assumed that trust in God’s omnipotence would collapse in the face of the horrific misery of the concentration camps. But the opposite proved (in general) to be true: the power of the conviction that everything has a purpose was exactly what kept people standing firm.

For more on this doctoral study, click here.

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