Carpet weaver

A few weeks ago, Restoration member Liz Gray sent me this reflection. It’s beautiful. With her permission, I’m sharing it here. Thanks, Liz!

This week I got a very unexpected package in the mail. My mom died about 17 years ago, and sometime shortly before she died she must have sat down one day and written me a letter telling me how much she loved me, popped it in an envelope with her wedding pearls and stuffed it in a drawer. This week my step-mother found that envelope and sent it to me. This week happens also to be the tenth anniversary of my brother’s death from melanoma. Also, following our burst pipe disaster last month they now say we have asbestos and mould – both of which require radical action (I’m reacting by leaving the country – hoorah for enough airmiles!). Meanwhile, I’m writing an essay about the reformation for seminary.

Your week was probably like that too – a mixture of sublime and ridiculous, the ugly and the beautiful, the banal and the glorious. So how does God fit in? Everywhere! I have often pictured God as the master carpet weaver (not sure where I first saw/heard this, was it an illustration in a book or talk?). As stuff happens in life we make decisions about how we’ll respond… what we’ll say and do…  God then maybe breaks off one colour and adds a fresh one. But he keeps weaving, mixing in the sad and the glad, the good and the bad. I have a feeling I’ll see my carpet when I get to heaven, and God will explain the changes in colour, texture and pattern. I so hope it will be beautiful. Really this is what the beatitudes are all about – stuff happens and then what do you do? God knows and loves us through it all, encouraging, forgiving, praising and teaching, chiding and disciplining and most of all loving. I am so grateful that he is good and that he is my father.