A Tangle of Threads

Wow, what a week it has been.  I have been up and I have been down.  Feeling a little discombobulated, yet sure that I am on the right path.  I pick up one thread and put it down only to pick up another and then return to the original choice.

I seemed to have trouble calming my mind to listen.  Then I read from the second Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians:

Brothers and sisters:
We hold this treasure in earthen vessels,
that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us.
We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained;
perplexed, but not driven to despair;
persecuted, but not abandoned;
struck down, but not destroyed;
always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus,
so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body.

The message for me is there is always hope!  If I can truly carry the body of the dying Jesus in me then I will have the life of Jesus in me!  I will be as the people in the psalm, " Those who sow in tears shall reap rejoicing."

Rejoicing.  It is a word and an emotion that I fear we use little these days.  It is often difficult to see in our pain and sorrow that the God that loves us is there with us.  Our struggle is to use the pain and sorrow to be drawn closer to Him.  Joy and sorrow are both gifts, yes gifts that God gives us so that we may lay our head near His Heart and listen to the sound of Him in our Souls.

I have two bowls of yarn by my chair where not only do I create, but I hear God talk to me in the silence of my crocheting.

 One bowl is full to overflowing with bits and pieces of completed works.  Too small to be of much use, but you never know.  Even when living on our boat I was hard pressed to throw away any bit of rope or twine. 

The other bowl is piled with bigger left overs.  They seem to have more potential.  They are wound neatly enticing me to use them.  Yet, more often than not I find myself reaching into the small bowl of bits and pieces to mark my place, to consider a color combination.

I think that God is similar to those two bowls.  He helps us wind up the ends of threads, but He often picks from that small bowl of tiny bits to help us weave our lives into the creation that He wants us to be.

Lord,
Help me to remember that even when perplexed,
I will not be driven to despair;
When persecuted,
I will not be abandoned;
If struck down,
I will not be destroyed;
Lord, I am only an empty vessel,
waiting to be filled...

~Cindy