Reflecting on the experiences of our lives begs the question, “why”?
Childhood scenes rushed back at me out of the night, strangely close and urgent. Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do. (Ten Boom 17)
Corrie’s father who would have loved to have a formal education, made one of his own and took it into his work.
The specifics of the prayer were always different, for Father-who loved science-was an avid reader of a dozen university journals. Through the years he took his stopped watches to “the One who set the atoms dancing,” or “Who keeps the great currents circling through the sea.” The answers to these prayers seemed often to come in the middle of the night: many mornings I would climb onto my stool to find the watch that we had left in a hundred despairing pieces fitted together and ticking merrily. (43)
Corrie expressing that something could have happened to her if she had not left her bed upon hearing her sister moving around in the kitchen during a dogfight overhead, when coming back she found shrapnel on her pillow.
But Betsie put a finger on my mouth. “Don’t say it, Corrie! There are no ‘if’s in God’s world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety-O Corrie, let us pray that we may always know it!”
Corrie did not think she was up to the task of developing the sources needed to protect the people they were hiding even though they knew so many of the Haarlam residence and workers, she didn’t know their political views.
But-and here I felt a strange leaping of my hearet-God did! My job was simply to follow His leading one step at a time, holding every decision up to Him in prayer. I knew I was not clever or subtle or sophisticated; if the Beje was becoming a meeting place for need and supply, it was through some strategy far higher than mine. (65)
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