Zephaniah 3:19
Behold, at that time I will deal
with all your oppressors.
And I will save the lame
and gather the outcast,
and I will change their shame into praise
and renown in all the earth.
Perhaps the greatest mystery of redemption is that it can transform the memory of pain into joy so that we are actually grateful for the things we have suffered. It happens, even on earth, that a great saint like Corrie Ten Boom could look back on her time in a Nazi concentration camp and be grateful for how God blessed her and many other people through it. It happens, even on earth, that some awesome work of beauty, glory or love spring precisely from the wounds we have received, just as the grace of Christ for the world springs from his bleeding hands and feet and side. It happens, even on earth, that parents and children, separated by some long bitterness, find reconciliation in a way that fills them with gratitude for the trial since it was the means by which they came to a deeper love for one another than they would otherwise have known. How much more then, in heaven, will the saints in their full redeemed glory find that their shame has been changed into praise?
