New Insight into Psalm 23...series

"We look at the tapestry of our life with its beautiful pattern of variegated colors, and there is a particular spot which is woven in deep crimson. It was there that we suffered so terribly. We reach out and tear that crimson spot out of the whole beautiful fabric and say, "this is life. It is hard. It is cruel. It is unfair." But wait. Put that crimson piece back into the tapestry and stand off and view it in its relationship to the golds and the purples and the blues which surround it, and you will discover that it required just that crimson spot in your life to complete the beauty in the pattern. Without it the whole pattern would have been flat. So often we tear one page out of the book of our life- that page which was written in scarlet letters  of awful agony- and we say, "This is life." No, put the page back into the book and read the whole book- begin with babyhood, read on through childhood, youth, young womanhood, young manhood, on down through the sunset days of old age- and you will discover that the book would have been terribly dull were it not for such pages. Our trouble is that we forget the blues and the golds already woven into the pattern, and the pages of pleasure already written into the book, and since we cannot see what the future is to produce, we get terribly afraid as we view the awful present. But remember that you are in the one who sees it all and, seeing to the end, He turns to you and whispers, "Fear not."
If we could see what HE sees, if we could see ourselves arriving with Him and in Him at the destination of eternity, then our fears would be allayed. No, we cannot see what He sees, but I'll tell you what we can do: we can hear what He says; and in spite of all the tragedy and suffering which His omniscient eye detects as coming into our life in the days ahead, He sees with that same omniscient eye our safe arrival in eternity. So, cannot we trust Him even though we cannot see? If by some means you could be made absolutely certain that you were going to arrive safely and without harm at a certain destination, would not that assurance and guarantee in itself be sufficient to allay any fear which might be occasioned by a bit of rough going enroute? The one who not only sees the end from the beginning, but who also maps out the course and does that driving, whispers in your ear today, "I am the first. I am the last. I was dead. I am alive. I know all the way, and I know the end of the way, and I am saying to you today, 'Fear not.' "
~page 74