256 The Thread and The Tapestry
On Misplaced Praise, Stiff Necks, and the God Who Works Through Both
Good morning and hello friends,
The below article was partly inspired by this one 👇🏿 be sure to check it out 👍🏿.
This morning I am reminded that we are each but a single thread in a broader tapestry. Where does this thought come from?
For over 5 decades, I’ve idolized people, business, profits, things, myself, my “accomplishments” not for a moment, for which none of these things acknowledged the will and work of The Father, most High, Yahua, the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
This thought often comes in the quiet, after a failure. After the moment I exalted a man, a preacher, a leader, a parent, and felt that hollow ache when he proves, inevitably, to be just a man. The thread feels insignificant. Unseen. A coarse, brown strand in a knot of confusion on the backside of the embroidery.
We won’t always know the point of the season we’re in. Why this pull? Why this snag? Why this seemingly directionless length of mundane and repetitious waiting?
His only ask, if we claim to love Him, is deceptively simple: obey. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15, ESV). He doesn’t ask that we understand or approve. He doesn’t aske us to see the final pattern. Simply to Obey. In that submission, we get to play our part. And the consequence…the quiet, fierce promise, is that this part is “for our good” (Romans 8:28), even when the loom’s noise drowns out the reason.
Yahuah creates, and He fulfills His will, His Logos through those creations. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Every act of genuine healing, every word of true prophecy, every moment of costly grace performed by a human hand is the Father’s will moving through clay vessels. “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13, ESV).
So why do we keep missing the point? Why do we honor the vessel and forget the Potter? We see Joseph interpreting dreams and saving nations, and we marvel at Joseph. We see Moses standing before Pharaoh, and we elevate Moses. We watch David take down Goliath with a sling and a rock and we elevate David as the main character in the story. We see a gifted teacher, a charismatic leader, a wise parent, and we fix our hearts on them. We give our hearts to priests, presidents, popes and CEOs. We have rejected our perfectly just and sovereign Father for flawed men.
And then, in our deepest rebellion, when the Master sent His only begotten Son, the perfect Image of Himself to show us the righteous and holy path home, we looked at the Son and said, “No. Give us the vessel instead. Give us Barabbas” (John 18:40).
We read the scrolls of the Israelites with the arrogance of hindsight. “How could they be so stiff-necked?” we cluck, tracing their cycles of idolatry and deliverance with our clean fingers. “After all He did for them!”
We are blind to the log in our own eye.
We are the Israelites of the new epoch. Our idols have newer means with the same old motives. Our golden calves are cast in pixels and polished rhetoric. Our rebellion plays out in what we binge, what we boast, what we harbor in our hearts against our brother. A time from now, long after we’re gone, our descendants will look back on these records, these very words, and ask the same damning question of us: “How could they see the pattern and still walk the same path?”
This grieves me. Not for you, but for me. I write this accusation to my own reflection. I have been complicit. I have misplaced my awe. I have given to men the reverence due only to the Father. I have listened for the messenger’s voice and tuned out the Sender’s.
He is, with a patience that shatters me, opening my eyes. Showing me the back of the tapestry where my thread is knotted and loose. Showing me that every good thing, every true word spoken, every genuine act of love, every breath in my lungs this morning, is born of the Father’s will (James 1:17). We must not be of dull mind. We must not let our hearts be stolen by the shiny things of this world and the flawed men that bare them.
Yahusha, forgive me. Search this heart. Burn out the idolatry that honors the thread over the Weaver. Cleave from me the unforgiveness, the wickedness, the unholy hunger for any glory but Yours.
You are the source. All good things are born of the Father’s will. Let my praise bypass the vessel and flow directly to the Wellspring. Let my obedience be the only signature my thread leaves on this grand design.
Father, Yahua,
I come to You as a single thread, coarse, knotted, and seeing only the confusion of the backside. You are the Weaver. I have forgotten this.
I confess I have honored the vessel over the Potter. I have given my awe to the voices of men: preachers, leaders, the charismatic and the powerful.
I have listened for their words and tuned out Yours. I have fixed my heart on temporary figures and polished images, rejecting You, my perfectly just and sovereign King, for flawed, temporary replacements.
I have been stiff-necked. I read of Your people in Scripture and judge their cycles of rebellion, all while walking the same path myself. My idols have newer means, but the same old motive: to worship the creation, not the Creator. Forgive me.
Search my heart, Yahusha. Burn out every root of this idolatry. Cleave from me the unholy hunger for any glory but Yours. Shatter my dull mind. Steal back my stolen heart.
You are the source. Every good thing, every breath in my lungs this morning, is born of Your will alone. Let my praise bypass every vessel and flow only to You, the Wellspring.
Let my obedience, simple, trusting, even when I cannot see the pattern, be the only mark my thread leaves on Your grand design. I yield to the pull, even when it makes no sense. Your will be done.
In the name of Yahusha the Messiah, the perfect Image and the only path home, I pray.
Amen.
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