The Underside of the Embroidery

Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter. JOHN 13:7

Audiences who heard Corrie ten Boom speak in her later years often remembered one thing above all: a piece of embroidery. She would hold it up with the back towards them — a mess of knots, loose ends and tangled threads, with no pattern to be seen. That, she would say, is how our lives and the history of the world look from where we stand. Then she would turn it round, and there was a crown, or a picture, worked in bright colours. That is how it looks from God’s side. It was the simplest of illustrations, and it carried the whole of her teaching on providence.

From Vught to the platform

It is worth knowing that the image is an early one. As the Ochorus biography records, the picture of the embroidery already appears in her first account of the camps, written in 1945, in connection with the camp at Vught. It was not a platform device invented for American audiences. It was something she reached for in the middle of the darkness, and kept for the rest of her life.

In the recorded addresses on Ochorus she uses it repeatedly. In How to Forgive she holds up the tangled side and says it is like the television news. In Tribulation she says it is like the world history of her own day, and like our own lives when we cannot understand what is happening. Then she points to God’s side, and to the plan He is working out.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. ISAIAH 55:8–9

Plans, not problems

With the embroidery she paired a saying that she was careful to credit. In Tribulation she attributes it to a teacher she calls Major Thomas: that God has no problems, only plans, and that there is never panic in heaven. It has since been attached to her own name so often that the source is usually forgotten. It is a good example of the caution raised in the introduction. She borrowed freely and credited honestly; the internet has not always been so careful.

The saying is a plain statement of Scripture’s teaching about God’s sovereignty.

Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. ISAIAH 46:10

God is not surprised. He is not scrambling to repair a plan that has gone wrong. What looks from below like chaos is, from above, a pattern being worked with great care.

The poem she did not write

In Tribulation she also recites a poem she says she had learned in America, about life as a weaving between God and the soul, in which the weaver sees the upper side and we the under. Many versions of this poem now circulate online with her name attached. She did not write it, and she said so; she introduced it as something she had learned. Readers who quote it should not attribute it to her.

The no that made sense later

Her most personal illustration of the hidden pattern concerns an unanswered prayer. In Total Surrender she tells how, during her months in solitary confinement at Scheveningen, she prayed every day that she would never be taken to a concentration camp in Germany. God, she says, gave the answer no. She and Betsie were taken to Ravensbrück.

At first she could not understand it. But in the camp she saw how God used the two sisters to bring the gospel to women who would never have heard it otherwise, many of whom died there with the name of Jesus on their lips. Then, she says, she understood why her prayer had not been answered as she asked.

But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. JOB 23:10

She told a smaller story to the same effect in Tribulation. She had longed to visit believers in Siberia, but illness kept her at home, and her doctor forbade the journey. She was disappointed. Weeks later a Russian pastor wrote to tell her that her books had been smuggled into Siberia and translated, and had reached more people than she could ever have reached by going. She saw the pattern, she says, and thanked God.

When we do not see the other side

A caution is needed here, and it is one Corrie’s own life supplies. In the stories she told most often, the right side of the embroidery was turned round in her lifetime. She saw why she had been sent to Ravensbrück. She saw why she had not gone to Siberia. But there was much she never saw. She never learned on earth why Betsie died when she lived, or why so many of the women she read the Bible to were murdered. The embroidery image does not promise that we will see the pattern here. It promises that there is one.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 1 CORINTHIANS 13:12

That distinction matters pastorally. The image can be misused as a quick explanation offered to a grieving person — as though the death of a child were a knot that will look pretty later. Corrie did not use it that way. She used it to encourage trust when understanding was absent, not to supply understanding where God has withheld it. Some things belong to Him alone.

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever. DEUTERONOMY 29:29

Curiously wrought

There is a lovely echo of her image in the Psalms. David speaks of being made in secret and curiously wrought — the word suggests embroidery or weaving — in the lowest parts of the earth, with every day of his life written in God’s book before one of them came to be.

My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. PSALM 139:15

The God who embroidered each of us in secret is embroidering our lives still. We see the underside. He sees the whole.

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! ROMANS 11:33

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Name one tangled area of your life where you cannot see the pattern. Tell God honestly that you do not understand it, and that you choose to trust Him.

2. Recall one prayer God answered with no that you now understand. Give thanks for it.

3. Recall one you still do not understand. Leave it with Him, under Deuteronomy 29:29.

4. Before you next offer a grieving friend an explanation, ask whether presence would serve them better.

5. When you quote a saying, credit its source, as Corrie did. Check one you often use.

A PRAYER

Lord, I see the knots and the loose ends. You see the pattern. Help me to trust Your side when I can see only mine.

Thank You for the prayers You answered with no, and for the ones whose reasons I have not yet been shown.

Keep me from offering easy explanations to those in pain. Make me a comfort rather than a commentator.

You have no panic, only plans. Work out Your purpose in me, and let me see it face to face at last. Amen.