Threads, plans, patterns and beauty

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts. - Isaiah 55:8-9

For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. – Jeremiah 29:11

Decided a few months ago to make a friendship band for a friend’s birthday, unfortunately I couldn’t find the pattern for what I wanted to make ANYWHERE, so I gave up. BUT…. those of who know me and know how much I hate not getting what I set out to achieve, will understand why I couldn’t let it go.

So last week in order to switch my sleep/wake cycle for nights I set about making the pattern and making the band.

Showing the pattern excitedly to friends and colleges it struck me that no one could see the pattern for what it was. I needed to hold it at arms length from everyone so they could make out the pattern that was clearly evident to me. Got me thinking about the pattern God’s planning for my life, how often I can’t see the bigger picture because I’m lost in the detail of now. I can’t see the woods for the trees as they say. His plan is so clearly evident to him because he designed it, it doesn’t need to be evident to me now, cause one day I’ll be able to hold it at arms length and see it for what it really is.

With that thought on my mind I set about making the pattern, I saw the whole process a lot differently, looking at the threads had no idea of the greater picture, they could not perceive their role in the design/plan/pattern that I had made, the threads were sometimes up sometimes down sometimes went forward, backwards, were obscured by different threads, often came full circle to where they’d originally started only to repeat the process again. The treads only requirement was to be faithful to the way I placed them, to remain on top when the pattern called for it and to be put down when the pattern called for it, the thread required no understanding of the overall pattern, required no vision of their role in the bigger picture. But ultimately the pattern was a thing of beauty, a creation of my hands that I rejoiced in, that I took pride in, that when it all came together showed a purpose to the seemingly random movements of threads, that reflected my abilities.

I am that thread, unsure where exactly I’m being placed, why I’m being placed there and what the next step will be. But my role is to be faithful to where I’m placed, to trust that the creator of the pattern of the whole universe is planning a thing of beauty, something that reflects his glory, that is more then I could have imagined, better then I could have hoped, beyond my wildest dreams.

Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. - 1 Corinthians 2:9
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, - Ephesians 3:20

Something that when’s all’s said and done He looks on with joy, and pride and say as he did on the first day that “it is good”. Just like I moved the threads it is only through His power that I can do anything, that I may shine like the colors in my band did, only through “being still and knowing He is God” may I be part of the intricate plan he has designed for me, for my life as it play out, as it intertwines with other lives.

May the last day see him look on me with joy and say “this is my beloved in whom I am well pleased, enter into the joy of your master” Pray that I be faithful to the pattern he is planning without resistance, without the need to see the bigger picture which only He sees

By the way – this is the pattern