Who is Weaving You?

As seen in the Village Voice and the HEARTbeat

Who is Weaving You?

            Many of you who read my weekly article know I was in the military.  I had the opportunity to see many beautiful places and meet some interesting people.  One such person was a man from Turkey.  As a matter of fact, he was a former Turkish soldier who was part of their special forces group.  You would not realize the fearsome warrior he was trained to be by looking and talking with him years after his service as a soldier ended.  As my deployment time went by, we shared daily coffee and stories as well.

            What brought a former Turkish special forces soldier to Baghdad?  He had a small business on our base selling rugs made in the Middle East, but mainly from Turkey.  I was familiar with his type of rugs as my father had purchased a few when he was in Iran in the 1950’s.  Eventually, I purchased two of his “machine” woven rugs, a 5x8 and a larger 9x12.  Both are very heavy, constructed of thick, wool fibers, and are of the highest quality.  Both rugs together cost me around $3,000.  Why did I buy the machine rugs instead of the hand-made ones?  Even though the hand-made ones were of the highest quality, they were also three times the price of the machine made!  Soldiers aren’t paid in gold bullion, so I opted for the lesser cost, yet very high-quality rug.

            Recently I purchased a rug off the internet to serve as a chair mat for my office.  I immediately found the quality to be drastically inferior to my Turkish rugs, and I’m having the hardest time getting the edges to lay flat.  The weave is very loose, the fibers are synthetic, and the base of the rug looks like twine you’d find in a burlap sack.  Suffice it to say the materials and the weaver were vastly different, which ended in dramatically different products.

            Did you know you are a woven product?  Many of us have heard we are “knitted” in our mothers’ womb.  The miracle of life can only be attributed to one person – Almighty God.  The Apostle Paul also talks about a knitting process after birth.  In his letter to the church at Colossae, Paul wanted everyone, not just those of Jewish faith, to understand Jesus came for the whole world.  By understanding this, people from everywhere could come to a saving knowledge of Jesus’ salvation sacrifice, and be transformed by their daily walk with Him.  He goes so far as to talk about a weaving process of sorts: “I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God” (MSG).

            We are in the process of being woven every day by that which influences us the most.  One day we will be a presentable product to our weaver.  Will you be presented as a finely hand-woven product, produced by the Spirit of the Creator of the universe, or by the one who roams and devours souls, eventually destroying their witness?

            Let Christ daily weave you into the most beautiful work, presented as sinless to the Father in your appointed hour!  Amen!