WORKS OF ART

This loom on display at an Amish bakery in Idaho fascinated me—not that I’d never seen a loom before, but that the “work in progress” prompted me to wonder what the weaver’s design would be. The “warp” are the threads that run lengthwise, and the “woof” run crosswise. The weaver decides what colors will run each way, and as the shuttle for the woof goes in and out of selected threads, a design emerges. But this part is important: the slamming tight of the crosswise threads to make a taut, strong fabric.

Weaving is hard, and noisy!  Like life, sometimes. We have a choice: to yield to the God-appointed hard “slams” to tighten the fibers of our being, or to ask Him to lay off, with the result of a weak and hardly-useful product. The writer of Hebrews wrote of the spiritual aspect of those “hard slams”:

God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.  No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.  Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:11)

Another “fiber art” illustration further emphasizes our need to trust God, even in the times that seem dark and confusing.  It’s one frequently used by the late Corrie ten Boom, survivor of the Holocaust, who spent the rest of her long life in weary travel and speaking, pointing people to Jesus. She would show the back side of an embroidery project, full of knots and stray threads, and not very pretty. But turned over, it revealed a glittery crown. She’d quote this poem:

“My life is but a weaving / Between my God and me.
I cannot choose the colors / He weaveth steadily.
Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow; / And I in foolish pride
Forget He sees the upper/ And I the underside.
Not ’til the loom is silent/ And the shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas/ And reveal the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful/ In the weaver’s skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver/ In the pattern He has planned.
He knows, He loves, He cares;/ Nothing this truth can dim.
He gives the very best to those/ Who leave the choice to Him.”

I probably heard her quote that poem when I heard her speak in person in the mid-1970s in southern California. Friends urged me to arrive early at church to get a seat. I did, and was astonished by the crowds already waiting an hour early for the doors to open. I will never forget this simply-dressed older woman, her hair in an old-fashioned bun, speaking through her thick accent of atrocities she survived and the sustaining presence of God.

She would die a decade later on her 91^st birthday, her “weaving” (or embroidery) finished—to the glory of God.