Everyday Encounter with God

Pastor Sylvia's Encounters with God in the Midst of Everyday Life

 

Woven By God

My mother was a weaver. Her loom was 6-feet long and 5-feet wide. It took up a sizeable portion of our small dining room in Coquille, Oregon.

Looms are designed to provide support and tension as thread is systematically transformed into cloth. The warp is strung vertically and holds the tension; it is the backbone of the weave. Waft threads are woven between and around and through the warp, creating the pattern and design.

I recall long nights watching her—with Dad as long-suffering assistant—warping her loom for a new creation. Yards of thread were laboriously fed through small metal guides and advanced onto a giant roller. Foot pedals raised and lowered complex harnesses holding groups of threads carefully placed by color and texture. Nothing is ever random in the warping of a loom.

Watching my parents warp Mom’s loom always looked boring and tedious to me. I saw no pattern. No beauty. And yet, in my mother’s creative imagination each thread had purpose. Each one was critical to a plan only she could see.

Today it is apparent to me that life resembles my mother’s weaving. Our warp is the DNA and traits we inherit from our family. I have my father’s brown eyes, my paternal grandmother’s body, and my mother’s arthritis.

Other threads in my warp reflect the culture I was born into, some of it godly and some not so much.

My adopted daughter is a fascination to me. Her birth mother left her in the hospital when she was born and they have never spoken. Yet their mannerisms and fears and the things they love (animals, blues music, drama) are the same. They even walk with the same gait. How does that happen? Could we have hereditary traits science has yet to discover?

After the threads were fed one-by-one onto her loom, mother always rested. She may have been eager to begin the new project, but she stopped first. Empty spools were discarded. Unused thread was carefully stored for consideration in future projects. Blisters and cuts on her fingers were given a brief time for healing.

Then Mother began weaving.

She sat high on a bench, balanced on firm cushions. Her feet moved from pedal to pedal, creating a rhythmic percussion as she threw the shuttle from side to side. Back and forth. Clang. Back and forth. Clang.

Gradually a beautiful pattern began to emerge.

Scripture tells us that God knew us before the foundation of the world. Jeremiah 1:5 says, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.” Ephesians 1:4 says, “… even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”

Life is the threads of the shuttle moving through the warp of our inherited traits. Each experience, each seemingly chance encounter, goals met, tragedy survived, friends made and friends lost, are not random. They are carefully guided by the hand of the Master Weaver. Our unique pattern was imagined before time. That’s why it takes decades for our true beauty to be revealed.

None of my mother’s weaving survived her. I didn’t find a single placemat or bookmark after she passed. Everything she made was given away as a gift to others.  

Yet she remains ever-present in my warp. Pieces of her were put into my life at the beginning of time. The true purpose of those threads is just now becoming apparent as the shuttle of my own  life experiences passes back and forth. Clang. Back and forth. Clang.

We each have a pattern and it is beautiful.