SEARCHLIGHT
What do you do when life gets messy?
SCRIPTURE
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10 NIV
SPOTLIGHT
Corrie ten Boom was a very committed Christian, who along with her father and sister, hid many Jews in their Amsterdam home during World War II. Risking their own lives, Corrie and her family helped many Jewish people escape the horrors and death of the Nazi Holocaust. The ten Boom family was imprisoned in concentration camps. Only Corrie lived to tell her story of God’s sustaining love through the ordeal. She travelled the world encouraging believers to trust in God’s plans and purposes for their lives even when facing great pain and persecution.
In her book, “The Hiding Place,” Corrie described a time when she spoke to a group of children. She unfolded a purple cloth with a mess of hundreds of colorful strings tied in knots and pulled through the cloth. The cloth displayed confusion. There seemed to be no clear purpose for the strings. They seemed to be tangled together. Then Corrie turned over the messy cloth and revealed a magnificent tapestry of a gold crown with multicolor jewels and gems. Corrie said, “This is what God sees… from His perspective…a masterpiece.”
Your life is like a tapestry. It may be difficult to believe. Don’t forget that every tapestry is two-sided. On the front, there is a magnificent, colorful picture for all to gaze at and appreciate. When you turn the tapestry to the backside, you see a confusing, mess of colorful threads making no sense. One side is beautiful and the other is messy.
Truth be known, what you often see is the back of your tapestry. At times, nothing seems to make sense. Threads crisscross every way. Colors are not organized. The backside is confusing and jumbled. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason. Everything seems to be random.
Isn’t it true that your life can be like that? Life often does not make sense. You feel just like the back of a tapestry. Life is messy and confusing many times. You ask, “What is going on?” You question what God is doing. You just don’t understand why life is the way it is. Sometimes it may be due to problems. You may lose your job and you become financially threatened. Other times a messy life results from pain. Sickness/illness strike you or a loved one. And let’s not forget that life’s mess often results from people. Relationships breakdown. People often choose anger and unforgiveness as a chosen way of life. You wonder what you should do. Of course, you love God. Of course, you pray and forgive as Jesus taught. Yet the problems keep mounting and the pain keeps growing and the undesirable people do not change or go away.
Remember what Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:10. Read again the Scripture focus for today. You are God’s handiwork. You are His workmanship. God can make something beautiful out of crumbled castles and dreams that have turned to ashes. Unseen to you, God is weaving your life into a masterpiece. He, who is not only your Creator and Designer, is your Master Craftsman crisscrossing each thread of your life into something magnificently breathtaking. From your perspective your life looks like the tapestry backside. From God’s perspective, what appears to you to be confusing or even chaotic is beautiful on the front side. Rejoice like David in Psalm 139:13,14,16,17 which states. “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.… your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, oh God!”
You need to learn to pray like former New York Yankee second baseman Bobby Richardson, “Dear Lord – your will, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else, Amen.”
You are a member of God’s family. God is your heavenly Father and the Master Weaver. You are a child of God. You are God the Father’s son or daughter. Just like looking at the front of side of the tapestry your Heavenly Father, Almighty God, will take all your colorful life threads and create a masterpiece. This is what He is doing even though it is sometimes not recognizable by you. All of your life experiences will become a work of art. What you consider to be a mess, God can bless. YOU ARE GOD’S TAPESTRY.
SOMETHING TO DO
Pray and ponder over the following Bible verses. Jeremiah 1:4,5; 29:11-13; Psalm 37:23; Romans 8:28 and Philippians 1:6.
The pictures in this article are of the embroidery Corrie ten Boom showed the children.
Grant Colfax Tullar penned this poem entitled “The Weaver.” “My life is but a weaving between my God and me, I do not choose the colors, He works so steadily, Oft times He weaves in sorrow, and I in foolish pride, forget He sees the upper, and I the underside. Not till the loom is silent, and the shuttle cease to fly, will God unroll the canvas, and explain the reason why. The dark threads are as needful in the Weavers skillful hand, as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned.”
SOUL TIME PRAYER
Heavenly Father, thank you for not only being my Creator and Designer but also my Master Craftsman. I believe You are at work, weaving together all the strands of my life into something that will bring You honor and glory. Help me to trust that your will and your ways are best. AMEN!