Sunday Afternoon Tea - Your Story & His Story

I've been thinking a lot recently about the way God weaves our lives, especially as my husband turns sixty-nine this week.  The Las Vegas odds against us ever meeting would have been astronomical.

I was in elementary school when he began his first year of college.  When we met, I was just finishing high school and he had started college, gone to Viet Nam, returned to finish college, and had just begun graduate school.

My own birth was a miracle as my mother was a middle aged widow with seven children (some of them grown already) when she met my father who was divorced with one older child.  I'm positive that my mother (aka: Mamaw) thought Joan was her youngest child forever and ever amen.

I think often of our friend, Sarah Clarkson, who is engaged to a man she met while she has been at Oxford.  I recall a conversation we had when we were all visiting Stephanie.  My daughter and I... much to Sarah's embarrassment... were speculating about Sarah's Mr. Darcy and how right now and right then God was preparing him to one day become the husband who would be perfect for Sarah.

What can I say, we both have some Emma tendencies in matchmaking.  However, he is and she is... perfect for him. We had no idea he was living and breathing and studying and going about his days in England.

Your story is no different even though the details are not the same.  If one stops to think about it for any length of time, I mean seriously ponder God's weaving together of history, we would all be downing Migraine Strength Excedrin.

The whole concept of God's sovereign will verses man's free will has perplexed theologians for millenia.  I do not come close to understanding one tiny part of it.  But it keeps me thinking... if He cares so much that He weaves together the smallest of circumstances then He certainly cares about the Big Stuff of life.

I don't know about you but when I'm walking through intense trials, I feel as one walking in the midst of heavy fog, not sure if there is a dangerous cliff ahead or a sun filled oasis.  I've experienced both.

However, I can testify to one essential fact of walking with Him over forty years now.  When I look back, I can see Him.  Oh, not with everything and I am certain on this side of Eternity most of our dark times will continue to be unexplained.  But there is enough of His Tapestry that I can view to know He was there all the time... weaving and shaping and using the dark threads as well as the pretty pastels and the vibrant primary colors... all coming together to form my Story.

I'm also certain of this... if I were to view the stitching close up and personal then I will see the dropped stitches and the tangles and the knots.  Those are all indications of the times I went my own way or didn't do what He asked or continued to do what He warned me against... or simply was too busy to pay attention to that Still Small Voice.

It is quite amazing and I have no clue... being the created and not the Creator... how He did it.  But there it is, proof in all its' glory.  The tapestry is my Story, the very me that Jesus will bring before the Father on That Day and show off to the Father in all its' Beauty.  Without the knots or the tangles or any dropped stitches.  Beautiful.  Perfect.

Of course the Father knows it is Jesus and not us who is truly flawless.  It was His plan in the very beginning.  Perhaps by that time I will fully comprehend His Sovereignty and my free will and how He made something beautiful of my mistakes... or perhaps not.  That may be one of the mysteries of the Ages.

If you are trusting Jesus, the tapestry of your life will turn out to be a thing of Beauty.  I can't promise you sunshine arriving immediately in the fog or that the bend in the road will come tomorrow that makes it all right.  But He is there and someday you will look back and perhaps be able to see how the Weaver was at work.  Even in the hard things of life as well as the seasons of blessings and joy.  He is always weaving and that work of art is you.

Image:  Time For Reading by Judy Gibson