The Lasting Impact of Our Words

 

By Maureen Miller

Lord, will You let every word be written that should be written, and will You prevent every word from being written that should not be written?**

Her prayer made me pause. Conviction struck, the sort that’s different from condemnation; rather, that which brings sweet repentance, so I prayed too—Father, forgive me for the words I’ve written that weren’t inspired by You. Despite any vain attempt on my part, redeem those words, for Your glory and the good of anyone who reads them. Amen.

Am I alone? How many times do we as writers jump into a project, neglecting to pause and pray prior to hitting the first letter on our keyboards?

Cornelia Arnolda Johanna Ten Boom certainly had a lot of time to make up. There wasn't a minute to lose. After all, Corrie, as we know her, was getting on in years when she was released from Ravensbrück, the Nazi concentration camp where she’d been a prisoner for almost a year. Upon her release, she was nearing her fifty-third birthday.

This watchmaker-turned-writer had a message to offer the world—namely, that which her sister, Betsy, shared just prior to her passing. There is no pit so deep that He [God] is not deeper still. Unlike Corrie, Betsy never again experienced earthly freedom, though, with her final breath, she stepped into the arms of her Savior and was free at last.

Corrie vowed to spend her remaining days sharing Betsy’s message with everyone she encountered. And until her death at the age of more than nine decades, she did just that, writing about the never-ending, always present love of Jesus available to all.

In Pamela Rosewell Moore’s book The Five Silent Years of Corrie Ten Boom, we’re given a glimpse of the woman many of us claim to love, to whom we attribute wise quotes that bring comfort, and who we know as the author of The Hiding Place. 

Pam Moore was Corrie’s caretaker from 1976 until her passing on April 15, 1983. Early on, she traveled abroad with this elderly woman who still lived in her native Holland. In 1977, however, Pam and Corrie moved to California, taking up residence in a home they named Shalom House. 

In her poignant book, Pam points readers to the powerful impact Corrie Ten Boom’s words had, even though she was well into her eighties, had suffered debilitating strokes, and eventually, was unable to communicate at all.

In her last five “silent years,” Corrie still touched lives. How? Because in the decades prior, when—at the age of sixty-one—she’d published her first of twenty-eight books, Corrie had committed all her words to the Lord, asking Him to allow the right ones, to prevent those not part of His plan.

Thus, even though Corrie couldn’t speak or hold a pen, her words lived on. They live on still, having lasting impact. And we, her readers, are all the better because of her obedience. May we make her prayer our own, that our words, too, might make an eternal difference.

Lord, will You please let every word be written that should be written

but prevent every word from being written that should not be written?

 For Your glory and our readers’ good, so be it.

 

**(Corrie’s prayer is taken from Pamela Rosewell Moore’s book The Five Silent Years of Corrie Ten Boom, p. 126.)

Photo courtesy of Unsplash.com and Brett Jordan.

Maureen Miller—wife, mother of three, and Mosie to two—lives on Selah Farm, a hobby homestead nestled in the mountains of western North Carolina. With a passion for God’s Word, Maureen is an award-winning author and photographer, contributing as a guest blogger and to several online devotion sites, as well as to a variety of collaboratives. She prays to have eyes and ears open that she might experience God in the miracles of His created world and blogs weekly about what He has to say at www.penningpansies.com. Her debut novel is under contract with Redemption Press.