THE TAPESTRY

The moment man chose sin, God, the artist, took out a needle and gathered His threads - vivid yellows and soothing greens, peaceful blues and bold reds, pale pinks and quiet grays - and began a work...a tapestry. And through the centuries, He wove the threads into intricate patterns of sin and redemption, justice and mercy, destruction and restoration, defeat and victory.

He wove a picture of Moses, an isolated shepherd who had no confidence and didn’t speak well, the one He commissioned to deliver his people from Pharoah.

The threads tell the story of a man named Gideon, who was living in fear when God used him to save Israel from her oppressors.

In shades of crimson, He stitched the story of a prostitute named Rahab, who chose to trust Him, and who became the great great grandmother of King David.

And in vivid purples and silvers and golds, there was King David, a murderer and adulterer and a man after God’s own heart…

But the tapestry didn’t end there. God continued to stitch images of a Kingdom. Images of Himself, glory laid aside, in the form of a man, Jesus, the child that was born. The son that was given. 

And with that, images of a father embracing a rebellious child. Images of healing and resurrection. Images of deliverance from evil.

Images of a cross, a tomb, and a miraculous first Easter morning. 

Images of you and me as children of the King. 

But here’s the thing about a tapestry - if you look at a tapestry from the wrong perspective, the wrong side, it looks like a chaotic, meaningless mess of string and knots. You have to turn it over and look at it from the other side to see the story. And then you realize what you thought was a mess of color and tangled thread, is actually a beautiful picture.

And so we must step into the tapestry. Away from the confusion and mess of threads and color and move toward the other side. As we move, the confusion becomes less and we start to see glimpses of the beauty. The mess is still there and if we choose to move back there we’ll see it again. But on the other side….

We’ll never see cancer.
We will never stand at the casket of a loved one. 
We will never see families destroyed. 

We will see courage instead of fear.
We will see beauty instead of ashes.
Joy instead of mourning. 
Hope instead of despair.
And life instead of death.

Instead of confusion and doubt - Wonderful Counselor.
Instead of oppression from our enemy - Mighty God.
Instead of abandonment and isolation - Everlasting Father.
Instead of fear, chaos and uncertainty - Prince of Peace.

You see, every thread, every knot, every color points to Jesus. The tapestry changes everything.