“And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together”. Colossians 1:17
My girls have recently developed a real passion for knitting. You would think I would be excited about this fact and deep down I am. However as you can imagine it’s a one step forward 20 steps back journey! The words “I’ve just dropped a stitch” strike fear in my heart as I realise I am going to have to deal with the ensuing tears and frustration to which I need to respond with more grace and patience. Mum is expected to swoop in take the dishevelled square of knitting full of holes and loops and make perfect again. At times it’s hard to know where to begin to fix it and sometimes it’s easier to just unravel it all and start again. Setting them up with a fresh chance to produce their next woollen masterpiece. However, I have noticed that one of my daughters is getting quite disheartened with the fact that I too easily give up trying to fix all the dropped stitches. She sees all her handiwork being undone as I quickly pull it apart and she ends up back at square one.
I started to think about how the Lord deals with us when we make mistakes. So often we feel like we need a fresh start, a blank sheet of paper, the opportunity to set out on a new adventure. We want to turn over a new leaf and put the past behind us and forget all our screw ups and failures. We don’t want to be reminded of where we’ve messed up and got it wrong. We feel like even seeing these things will pull us back into that cycle of defeat where we struggle to believe we can ever be all that God has called us to be. It says in the word that, “His mercy is new every morning”, and I am so grateful for that fact. I’m thankful that I can begin each day with a fresh sense of the Lord’s love and acceptance towards me. I know that I can have confidence that I can come boldly to His throne of grace despite my performance and that I can receive from him the grace and favour that I need, and that I can expect good success because He is good not because of my behaviour.
But more importantly I’m glad that unlike the knitting I don’t need to go back to square one every time I mess up and get something wrong. I’m glad that he can actually take my mistakes and rework them so that rather than having to keep starting again I can look back and see that he has taken the things that I thought would have looked ugly and distasteful and has made them into something beautiful. He has created a new design, way better than anything I could have made myself and I can actually look back and see what I have learnt on my journey, how I have overcome, how I have grown and how these events have shaped me for my good.
We can all, at times, feel afraid that life is going to unravel like the girls knitting, that it is fragile and easily unpicked but Jesus is holding it all together. He is the constant. He is unchanging. He literally has your life in his hands and you can be certain that when He holds you he will never let you go.
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Who Do You Say I Am Series – Exchange Church Belfast 2020