God's Embroideries

In the hustle and bustle of modern day living we often forget the following scene that exists either in faded memories, distant fiction, or now in tranquil corners of this globe: Sitting at his mother’s feet is a little boy looking up from the floor and asking what she is doing. She informs him that she is embroidering. He tells her that it looks like a mess from where he is.

From the underside he watches her work within the boundaries of the little round hoop that she holds in her hand. She smiles at him, looks down and gently says, "My son, you go about your playing for a while and, when I am finished with my embroidering, I will put you on my knee and let you see it from my side."

 The little boy wonders why she uses some dark threads along with the bright ones and why they seem so jumbled from his view. A few minutes pass and then he hears Mother's voice say, "Son, come and sit on my knee." This he does only to be surprised and thrilled to see a beautiful sunset.

He cannot believe it, because from underneath it looked so messy. Then his Mother says to him, "My son, from underneath it did look messy and jumbled, but you did not realize that there was a pre-drawn plan on the top. It was a design. I was only following it. Now look at it from my side and you will see what I was doing."

 In the same way, we can gaze up in despair and ask God why our lives and circumstances seem so messy, with dark and bright threads of existence seemingly tangled together with no rhyme or reason. But God our Father would have us sit on His broad lap and gaze upon the big picture sewed into the embroidery of His purposes from eternity past.

 Yes, we read in His Word that there is a pre-drawn plan, His design that all mankind is meant to follow. Indeed, all of us will have a unique path to tread that is a strategic part of this divine design. In Ephesians 2:10 the Greek word used for ‘workmanship’ is ‘poiema’ which means ‘something that is made, particularly out of fabric’.

The Greek word for ‘created’ is ‘ktizo’ which means ‘to fabricate’ that is ‘to sew or knit together fabric into a predetermined design’. Therefore, this verse could justifiably be re-written as: “..we are His embroideries, embroidered in Christ Jesus for good use , according to God’s pre-drawn design and pattern from the beginning of time that we should follow after.”

Extract taken from Tim's book "Picture Perfect" - read it at http://www.revtimothygibson.com/pictureperfect.pdf