Good Monday Morning, Church Family and Friends,
A few years ago, I conducted the funeral for a wonderful grandmother who was dearly loved by her family. To help me prepare for the service, the family offered me her personal Bible for a few days to read all the inscriptions and verses she had underlined. Inserted between two of the pages, I found a slip of paper with some words inscribed in their grandmother’s handwriting. Here is what she had written:
Not until the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly,
Will the Lord unfold the canvas and reveal the reasons why.
The dark threads are as needful in the skillful weaver’s hand.
As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern he has planned.
None of us really knew why she had tucked that poem into her Bible, but it was clear her life had not been easy. Widowed when her children were small, she had reared her family alone. Perhaps on one of the hard days she was wrestling with some misfortune she didn’t understand. Despite her questions, however, she possessed a strong faith that even the hardest of days can serve a purpose.
In her book A Man Called Peter, Catherine Marshall wrote that Peter was fascinated by the sea and dreamed of enlisting in the Navy. At that time, the enlistment age was 18, and he was only 16. He told all his friends that he was joining the Navy, but his age was ultimately discovered, and he was sent home. For several nights, he cried himself to sleep with disappointment. Peter Marshall ultimately felt led into the Christian ministry instead. Think how much poorer the world would have been if we had missed his eloquent voice of hope in books of sermons that have been read by generations.
Life is filled with deceptive events. That’s partly because we measure their worth by whether they bring us pleasure or pain. If an event is pleasing, we say it is good. If it causes hardship, we say it is bad. The truth is, we never know when we have had a good day. Sometimes our worst days turn out to be our best. This is why the poet declared:
The dark threads are as needful in the skilled weaver’s hand.
As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern he has planned.
It is said that when John Tyler was a member of the U.S. Senate (he would later become President), a crucial issue came up for vote. The political pressures were tremendous, and public opinion was contrary to Tyler’s conscience. When the roll call came, Tyler voted his conscience. Someone later wrote,: “Tyler slumped into his seat for a long moment. He then arose and walked out of the Senate in the proud company of his own self-respect.” What Tyler did not know that day was the world would remember this dark moment in his life as one of his finest hours.
Sometimes it takes a long time to see the pattern, to know where the road leads. But people of faith believe the pattern is there. Somewhere, sometime, all the events of life will be put together into a beautiful design by the “skillful weaver’s hand.”
It helps to take the longer view of life,
Bruce Jones, Pastor
Imagine Church
