While walking in my neighbourhood the other day, I saw something mysterious.

On one person’s front lawn there stood a jumble of foot-high letters of the alphabet, placed upright on stakes near the front window.

But the letters seemed randomly placed; they didn’t form coherent words. Was this some sort of secret code? Also, the letters were backwards from the perspective of anyone walking by on the sidewalk.

I then realized that they were meant to be read by someone inside the house.

When I deciphered the letters with this in mind, it suddenly made sense. Someone inside looking out the front window would see this message clearly spelled out on their front lawn:

“Happy Birthday!”

I was looking at the letters from the wrong side of the window. If I had been inside the home gazing out, the message would have been clear from the get-go.

I think this is true of a lot of things in our lives.

Some things we go through as believers won’t make sense until we’re on the “other side of the window.” By that I mean when we’re in Heaven, looking back at our time on Earth.

Certain of our experiences are mystifying to us. We can’t see any rhyme or reason to why they happened. They just seem to be a jumble of incidents that we can’t decipher, a “series of unfortunate events” that don’t seem to form a pattern.

During these seasons of our lives, we need to trust in God’s goodness and sovereignty. We may not be able to see a reason for our hardships, but we can trust that we have a loving God who is working in ways we can’t understand.

I love this quote by Charles Spurgeon:

“God is too good to be unkind and He is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace His hand, we must trust His heart.”

Occasionally, we are given a peek into how our difficult experiences fit into the grand scheme of things. We see the denouement of the story, and it all makes sense. We see what God had been up to the whole time.

Take the Old Testament story of Joseph, for instance. Sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, things seemed to go from bad to worse for him. He finally ended up in an Egyptian prison, seemingly forgotten by his family and even by his God.

But God had been at work the whole time, moving Joseph closer and closer to his destiny. When Joseph correctly interpreted the dreams of his fellow prisoners and then of Pharaoh himself, he was elevated to be second-in-command over the whole country. He used the administrative skills he had learned during his exile to manage the food supply during a devastating famine, saving countless lives, including those of his family.

Joseph was able to later tell his brothers:

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.” (Genesis 50:20)

Joseph was able to see the reasons behind his sufferings while he was still on “this side of the window.”

Not all of us will be granted that privilege, but Joseph’s story provides the comforting truth that, for believers, the things we go through do have a purpose in God’s plan.

One day, perhaps while still on Earth, but probably only when we get to Heaven, it will all make sense to us.

The letters will un-jumble themselves and a message will form. Looking back through the window, we’ll be able to read it clearly.

We’ll be satisfied with what we read, and will be able to praise God for the way He wove the story of our lives into a beautiful tapestry.

As you can see from the picture above, if you look at a tapestry from the back, it’s not always a pretty sight: you see a tangled mess with no discernible pattern.

But like so many things in our lives, the beauty only emerges when you view it from the other side.

© 2024 Lori J. Cartmell. All rights reserved.