Stitched-Strong Faith

20 September 2015

Vianna

Stitched-Strong Faith

Today was a beautiful walk in the country.  It started with a long 5km walk on level farm roads through vineyards and more olive trees. Breathtaking! Far in the distance was the small village, the medieval church towering about the rest of the village, and quaint cobblestoned narrow streets, barely enough for a car to pass.

My treatment of my new crabby knee has been insufficient.  It swells and stings painfully some times. The late morning through afternoon terrain did not help. It was a veritable roller coaster. It was 100m steeply up then down and so on for 18km. It has been a delightfully shorter day.

I chose to stay here in Vianna largely because, Cheryl Laurie, a close family friend of Bishop Eric Pike, with whom I walked the last Camino, is volunteering at this one particular albergue.  I could not resist staying a night to catch up on stories about the “good bishop” and his wonderful wife. Better yet, I was surprised to learn that she was a nurse and gave me treatment for my painful knee. What a Godcident!

Along today’s walk I had the imagination of that common analogy of our life being a tapestry.  The threads and colors weave in and out. To see a tapestry in process, for the inexperienced weaver, it appears a maddening confusion of threads of many colors tied bobbing and dangling beneath the scene in process.  Following this analogy, our life at times seems a confusion of many loose ends and disconnected life directions. Only when we look back upon the work do we see what the master weaver has artfully woven together in the beautiful picture of our life up to where the work is in process. There’s hope and anticipation because there’s more to the picture yet to be crafted! 

A beautiful imagery and comforting thought to consider God as our master weaver. True? It is relieving to think that He has a beautiful image of our life already in process. The whole Jeremiah 29 message comes alive, “I alone know the plans I have for you.”

What grew strong in my contemplation today is what the weaver must do when a strand of thread reaches its end? How does the rest of the tapestry continue at those broken, interrupted treads?

The answer is that He must stitch together a new thread.  One old thread stitched together in a tight knot with a new one. The tapestry of our life continues, but more importantly it becomes stronger with each precisely drawn and remarkably strong stitch. Numerous stitches are embedded in a tapestry all at different locations and times in the big picture. One might think that the stitches are the weak links in the work. The opposite is true. The stitches become the strongest points in the thread, and the sum of all of the stitches make the tapestry as a whole, stronger.

Within all that imagery, came this connection.  My life, our life, has a beautiful tapestry weaving together moment by moment.  A thread of our story comes to an end. Sometimes a thread is weak and breaks. Sometimes the color of the thread must change to create the continuing color scheme of the evolving story. A new stitch is needed.

I tend NOT to adjust well or enjoy the new stitching.  Something in life is going well.  I sense I can finally understand the general story the tapestry appears to be taking and then a dead STOP. Something minor to major has changed in my life. Serious illness, age related limitations begin to occur, personal challenge, family struggle, death, new life, work stress or work loss, finances collapse are just some of the threads of life that run empty or the thread just breaks. Time to be stitched again occurs.

Perhaps you’re like me in the fact that I have great confusion during long periods of stitching, or is it just my impatience with the process?  In another way, I just don’t particularly like the new color that is now part of the big picture. And yet another, I don’t see it as fair or even within my expectations, do I dare say, demand for it to be within my plans.

However, it is His stitching throughout our life that is the blessing. But more importantly, it is precisely the stitches that bring strength.  Good and bad health happen. Death happens. Careers are lost and incomes collapse. Friends and family move away to far off cities only rarely to be visited. People and events break our heart. This and many more snap the threads and the master weaver stitched us with new thread.

It’s all part of making our story of life one with “Stitched-Strong Faith.”

Jeremiah 29 contains the truth, “God alone knows the plans He has for us.”

Stitches and all. We need only have faith in His skillful hands.

In great love,

Deacon Willie, DW