Stitched Up

I have a good friend that lives a two minute walk from me, another Ruth. In fact she is actually another Ruth Robertson! We find it quite amusing, well at least I do. Each Christmas we both buy each other a little gift. I usually have great intentions of trying to get something personal, which has meaning to it. But as usual, I end up leaving it until the last minute and get something for the sake of it. It’s usually such a busy time that I have even sent one of the kids round to deliver it on her doorstep. Not very personal at all. This year I received a text message from her on Christmas Eve to say ‘sorry I had an idea for your Christmas but it hasn't happened yet, maybe you’ll get it at Easter instead! At the end of January she treated me to a coffee at one of our local cafes. I never gave the gift another thought.

A few weeks ago she arrived in my driveway with a gift bag and smiled and said ‘here is your Christmas present, sorry it’s so late.’ Inside the gift bag was a beautiful picture of my house. However the picture was made out of different pieces of material and stitches from a sewing machine. Little squares of different coloured material made up windows and trees and black stitching provided the outline of the house and all the little panes of glass on the windows. She had even made a pink watering can for the step at the front door, just like the one I have. It was so unique and different, I’d never seen anything like it and I loved it. I was so touched by the effort that she had put into it.

When I look at all the stitches she had made I have no idea how she was able to keep in mind how she wanted it to look when it was finished. It was so complex and if it had been me I would have gotten tangled up in all the different lines of stitching and gotten lost! The difference, she is very arty and I am not. She knew what she was doing and what she was creating. When I turned the picture over, the underside was all covered in messy stitches and loops of thread. You could tell it was the shape of the house but it didn’t resemble anything like my beautiful picture. If she had presented me with this side as the main picture, well I would have been polite, but I certainly wouldn't have described it as beautiful. I remember when I was a young teenager I had a bookmark called ‘The weaver’ in my bible

Just a Weaver

By Benjamin Malacia Franklin

My life is but a weaving

Between my Lord and Me

I cannot choose the colours

He worketh Steadily.

Oft times He weaveth sorrow

And I, in foolish pride,

Forget He sees the upper

And I the under side.

Not til the loom is silent

And the shuttles cease to fly,

Shall 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.

I remember the bookmark well, I knew what it was trying to say. But as a teenager I hadn't really experienced much of life and hadn’t yet gone through any of the different spells of life of which the poem speaks. Although I’m sure at the time I thought I’d experienced plenty of ‘sorrows’ as you do at that age!

I am so glad that the finished picture of my life is not something that I need to stress about and is probably one thing I don’t actually over think! As Ruth created that picture of my house, so God is the author and designer of my life. I trust my heavenly Father with my life and its outcome.

‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not

lean on your own understanding. In all your ways

acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.’

Proverbs 3:5&6

However just because I do trust God as He sees the bigger, complete picture of my life, I do still question Him some days and think ‘God where are you going with this?’ ‘What purpose is this for?’ As the loops and messy stitching make no sense to me because I don't understand how to get the finished result, so it is with God. I don't know what I will look like at the end of my life and I don’t mean physically, thank goodness for that! I mean what kind of person I’ll be, what mistakes I’ll have made and learned from, what hurt or joy I’ll have gone through. But God does and He knows exactly how to get that ‘finished result’. He knows what situations, circumstances and paths I have to go through to teach me patience, love, faithfulness, wisdom and ultimately make me more dependent on Him and into His image. When life is hard, I mean really, really unimaginably hard, we can still trust God. He sees the end result. He promises to never bring us to that point of where there is no return.

‘A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly

Burning wick he will not quench;’

Isaiah 42:3

A bruised reed; when we feel so damaged, so alone, so hurt, God promises he wont take us through anything that will break us beyond repair, beyond any use. It might change us, we might never be the same again, we might never understand why He allowed it to happen, He only asks us to trust Him. Have you ever seen a ‘faintly burning wick’? I have a few candles in the house and when they are almost finished you can sometimes barely tell if they are still alight or not. There is no bright light shining from them, in fact if I was having visitors over, I’d probably replace them with new ones so they can shine bright whilst my guests are here so it looks better. When you feel like the light of your life is barely even glowing, God will never give up on you. He will never put out that little remaining light and leave you. Remember as the mess on the underside of my picture doesn't make any sense to me, God can see the finished result of your life, trust Him.

If I’m honest, the day Ruth brought the picture round to my house, I wasn't actually feeling great. I’d been feeling a bit down, a bit discouraged. Probably having one of my ‘I can’t see where this is going now God’ moments, ‘are you sure this is going to work out?’. Earlier that same morning I’d been listening to an online message and for the first time came across a new song called ‘In Your Hands’ (I love song lyrics). It was basically reminding me, every problem, every worry, I can leave it in His hands. I was reading through these words when I heard Ruth arrive. Her belated Christmas present had arrived on exactly the right day. God knew when I would need it, when I needed encouragement, He sees the bigger picture. This last thought I’ll leave with you and I hope it encourages you the way it really encouraged me. On the picture was a lovely gift tag that she had written,

‘God can do anything you know, far more than

You could ever imagine or guess or request in

Your wildest dreams!’

Ephesians 3:20 (The message)