Tapestry of Grace

Though we like to think we’re the ones running our lives, the truth is that God is the one orchestrating each life.  Sometimes I look around and wonder if God really sees what’s going on only to remind myself that he does, I just don’t see his hand as clearly as I ought.  Jesus was a man of sorrows who knew more about pain and suffering than many of us can begin to imagine. And he did it all for us.  How extraordinary! How revolutionary!

I suppose because we’re sometimes given to thinking we’re the ones controlling our lives, we don’t understand when things go wrong, as they often will.  I know that for many years my first question was, God where are you?  I want a husband and kids too – what’s wrong with me?  Why won’t you give me that?  Seems I was in “gimme” mode a great deal of the time.  Funny I should ask that considering I thought I was the one in control.  The answer is that God never left, I did. 

Why do bad things happen to good people?  Why do some people get cancer and others don’t?  Why do some survive cancer and others don’t?  Why did a mother have to die before she had time to really live?  Why did those parents lose that beautiful child?  Why, why, why? I don’t know.  I do know that God walks through the fire with us and that it is in our suffering when we are closest to the Lord of the Cross. 

Walking through cancer I remind myself daily that God is in the details, even if I can’t feel him standing there with me.  The truth I learned is that tragedy is never the last act – not for those of us who believe in an unfailing, loving Father God.  We may go down, but he’ll always be there to pick us back up.  We may close our eyes in death, but one day we’ll rise with Christ and live with him forever.  Death does not win.  There is a God, and he is the God of the Impossible, so there is always hope.

God weaves a tapestry of grace around our lives in accordance with the plan he has for us.  By grace we come to know him.  By grace we walk to serve him.  By grace we share him with others. By grace we face the daily grind.  By grace we face tragedy and sorrow.  By grace we walk through the wilderness.  By grace we pick up the Sword of Truth and go into battle.  By faith we cling to the promise of his Kingdom.  From the day we are born to the day we travel Home, his grace surrounds us, grounds us, delivers us, and comforts us.

I say this having discovered that yet another co-worker is staring down the barrel of a gun called cancer.  He began with it in his brain and in his lungs; now it has gone to his spine.  The doctors tell him he hasn’t long. That kind of news is devastating.  All you have to hear is the word “cancer” and time stands still – nothing moves, you barely breathe, every sound seems to come from a long way off.  It’s bad enough to deal with the word, let alone what comes after.  Then to be told you haven’t long?  Usually when the doctors tell you that, they also tell you there’s nothing else they can do.

I know God is the God of the Impossible, yet I also know that sometimes the answer is no. It isn’t easy to accept that no might be the only answer you get.  Yet, by the grace of an ever present God, we do.  And we carry on until God calls us Home.  As the song says – the ship may be battered and the sails may be torn but the Anchor holds, in spite of the storm. I must trust that whatever happens it is imbued with God’s tapestry of grace over his life. 

At the same time I look at what I have been given and I wonder, why me?  What could God possibly see in someone like me?  I’m not pretty.  I’m not popular.  I’m not a great singer or a great writer or a great thinker. My hobbies are crocheting, quilting, and reading. I don’t date and I don’t party. My life is so routine I’m downright boring.  I go to work, I go home, I go to church – that’s the circle of my life.  How could God possibly use someone as plain and ordinary as me?  Why have I been left and others taken?  I don’t know.  I have to trust that God does.  I have to believe that whatever happens God has my life in his hands, as well as the lives of others, and that his plan will work things out for the better. 

One thing I have learned is that while God may have grand plans for my life, I sometimes make him work harder than needs to get me to where I should be.  I can be incredibly stubborn.  I can be even more incredibly stupid.  I can almost see God rolling his eyes, shaking his head, and wondering when I’m ever going to get it.  So far I haven’t seen a burning bush, been blinded on the road to Damascus, or wandered in the desert 40 years, but I’ve laid waste to the time I could have spent walking more closely with him.  How could God forgive me for that?  I don’t know but he does. 

Truth is, I’m not so good at pulling in all the strands of my life and weaving them into something credible and purposeful.  I drop stitches here and there, don’t buy enough of the same color yarn, use the wrong stitch, weave it too tightly or too loosely, and generally make a mess of things.  But unlike me God knows where each strand of my life is and what it needs to do.  He knows how to use it, what color it is, and how to weave them all together in a pattern that surprises me.  He takes the broken strands of my impossible life and weaves them into a tapestry of grace.