“There are no ‘if’s’ in God’s world.” – Betsie ten Boom

Dear Friend,

This simple statement has occupied a lot of my thinking for the last couple of weeks.

Here is the original story written by Corrie ten Boom in The Hiding Place …

One night I tossed for an hour while dogfights raged overhead, streaking my patch of sky with fire. At last I heard Betsie stirring in the kitchen and ran down to join her.

She was making tea. She brought it into the dining room where we had covered the windows with heavy black paper and set out the best cups. Somewhere in the night there was an explosion; the dishes in the cupboard rattled. For an hour we sipped our tea and talked, until the sound of the planes died away and the sky was silent. I said goodnight to Betsie at the door to Tante Jan’s rooms and groped my way up the dark stairs to my own. The fiery light was gone from the sky. I felt for my bed: there was the pillow. Then in the darkness my hand closed over something hard. Sharp too! I felt blood trickle along a finger.

It was a jagged piece of metal, ten inches long.

“Betsie!”

I raced down the stairs with the shrapnel shard in my hand. We went back to the dining room and stared at it in the light while Betsie bandaged my hand. “On your pillow,” she kept saying.

“Betsie, if I hadn’t heard you in the kitchen –”

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!”

I am thinking about how that truth should change my life. What does it look like to fully trust God? Not to say that I trust God, but really to trust Him.

Here are a few of the things I have thought of that I am working on:

• I wouldn’t question so often the plans and providences God ordain to guide my way.
• I wouldn’t worry so much about knowing the right thing to do tomorrow instead of doing the right thing today.
• I wouldn’t ever look back and say ‘what if’ this had happened, or ‘what if’ that hadn’t happened.
• I wouldn’t doubt whether the present circumstances were really the best that could be.I am trying to live in the peace of trusting My heavenly Father and His plans right now. How will your life change as you remember that “there are no ‘if’s’ in God’s world”?

 

Most of the time, I do not openly admit that I am thinking in these ways. But when I am honest with myself the worry, the fear, the strain from trying to accomplish my own plans instead of waiting for His, all stem from a lack of trusting God.

I am trying to live in the peace of trusting My heavenly Father and His plans right now. How will your life change as you remember that “there are no ‘if’s’ in God’s world”?

In our Risen Savior!
Christina Joy