The Master Artist
If you’ve ever seen a piece of finely embroidered work, a tapestry, that has been lovingly hand stitched, you’ve got an idea of the sense of awe that God showered me with recently.
Picture this…
The threads are shades of purple; the color of royalty. The needle is long and sharp. The cloth is of a fine linen, void of defects and just waiting for the artist to begin stitching. As the artist considers what to embroider, the Master Artist begins to move. Strand by strand and stitch by stitch, the Master moves with a flawless skill, weaving together the seemingly randomness of the threads.
What begins to take shape is a story. A story so beautiful that only God Himself could stitch it together. It begins with the prayers of generations past, praying into the future for relatives they will never meet. The first stitches are woven. The threads of the story continue to take shape, though sometimes it seems the threads are non-existent. Perhaps a generation or two doesn’t add much to the story, but their prayers, their threads, are laying the foundation for God’s continued stitching. Sometimes the threads are so pale in color, they are missed by the human eye. The hues ebb and flow with the passing of time, increasing and decreasing as the Master wills.
Scripture tells us in Ecclesiastes 4:12 (NIV) that a cord of three strands is not easily broken. When someone embroiders a tapestry, the embroidery thread is separated into strands of three. When the Master Artist is intricately weaving together His tapestries, He intertwines Himself as the third thread. A relationship, be it a friendship, a marriage or a family relationship, is made strongest when the Master Artist is intertwined with His children. Sometimes the threads humans embroider together break and unravel, and that can happen because of time, stress and life-changing events. The Master Artist’s thread, the third cord, is still intact. He is sewing into the fabric of brokenness, bringing back together the tattered edges and broken pieces of hearts shattered and torn by the seasons of life.
The Master’s hands continue to create, and even when it seems He lays the linen down, He’s still stitching. The Creator’s hands move with a grace-filled fluency and His eyes see what the human eye cannot. What the human eye perceives to be unfinished, the Master Artist sees unparalleled beauty. What the human eye perceives to be messy, God sees and stitches the purest of hearts into His creation. The Embroiderer is weaving together dark times and joy and stitches back together hearts broken by grief with the tenderest of touches. The Master’s threads never break, they never lose their vibrancy and they never fail to paint a picture of the Master’s love.
Sometimes the eyes of our hearts miss the vibrancy of the Master’s love. Sometimes the world we live in gets so noisy we simply cannot hear the soft voice of Jesus telling us to let His Father, our Father, keep stitching and creating. The weekend the idea of “The Master Artist” was born, I saw those purple threads being woven in the most miraculous ways. I heard the soft voice of Jesus say “I’m here, right here beside you.” I witnessed His love up close and in a way I never had before. The promises of Scripture walked up to the altar, and my heart has been forever changed.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NLT) says “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” The Master Artist has been intricately weaving together the stitches of our lives since the dawn of Creation, and no matter how hard we try, Scripture clearly tells us we simply cannot see the whole scope of God’s work. What we cannot see we can still experience, as long as we stand in the light of the Son, seek first the Kingdom of God and let the Master Artist possess the needle and thread.