On Sunday, our Pastor shared a story from a mission trip to India. As he watched master loomer create a beautiful rug, he noticed that the loomer would call out a number to an assistant. The assistant – usually a young boy – would give the loomer the thread that was identified by that number. Our Pastor asked their host, “What happens if the assistant gives him the wrong color thread?” The host answered, “The master loomer works it into the design; one would never know there was a mistake.”
This story was not the center of the message; but it resonated with me. I found myself returning to the image of the master loomer; taking something wrong and weaving it into something beautiful. It reminded me of Genesis 50:20 where Joseph tells his brothers: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”
Jacob was dead and Joseph’s brothers feared he might seek vengeance because they sold him as a slave to Midianites and told Jacob he was dead. But Joseph responded that their personal animosity toward a brother, had been used by God to save lives—the life of the Israelites, the Egyptians and all the nations that came to Egypt to buy food in the face of a famine that threatened the known world.
There is no master loomer greater than our God.
To say Joseph’s brothers made a mistake is an understatement. I am certainly grateful that none of the many mistakes I’ve made are of that magnitude. But they are mistakes, nonetheless. Bad choices driven by impatience, anger, frustration, arrogance, selfishness, self-pity, or the dreaded need to control. So many times, I’ve reached for the wrong spool of thread in this tapestry God has been weaving. How easy it would be to chastise me. To cast me aside as unrecoverable, ruined, damaged.
Instead, God used every one of those hard-earned, often embarrassing mistakes and turned them into threads of knowledge; growth, strength, compassion, and empathy. Creating a masterpiece not of my own accomplishments, but despite my failures. A story that is still being written; one that I will likely redirect many times by the lessons I’ve yet to learn.
In the book of Mark, John Mark describes the suffering Jesus endured. I’ve read the account so many times, however, this time, something struck me. “They clothed him with purple, and weaving a crown of thorns, they put it on him.” (Mark 15:17). While his persecutors wove a crown of thorns to punish him; God turned them into a Crown of Glory. What they meant for evil; God used to save lives…all our lives. He turned an instrument of pain into a song of salvation.
How humbled I am that our God loves us so much that He would allow his Son to suffer so that my sins would be forgiven. That my mistakes would not define me. But through a grace I cannot earn. That I do not deserve. He would take the ugliest threads and spin them into golden stands to be used for His purpose.
We are all masterpieces in the making. Woven with the love, grace and mercy of a Father who assures us that we are beautiful. Even with mistakes.