Redeeming the past

A friend was telling me today how her dad had opposed her marriage in the 60s to an Egyptian, fearing she would be miserable.  As it turned out, her fiancé was not the stereotype Muslim her dad had feared, was a kind and considerate man, and they had a good marriage.  But it took her decades to forgive her dad’s stubbornness.

Can those years of hostility be redeemed? 

Cattle in morning mist - rural Missouri

At the Cedars Midwest Bible Seminar, one speaker shared a way that worked for her.  You have a sad story?  Find out where God was in that story.  No matter how unjust or awful the past, infinite good has never been absent.  As you find Her presence right in those terrible circumstances, you are redeeming, even revising, that story. 

The good that is God permeates all the unhappy details, and they fade in importance.  Every glimpse of God’s love at the very moment when it seemed absent, throws light on those dark shadows, until the light is greater than the darkness.  This kind of editing rewrites the story into one that no longer haunts memory.