Not long ago, a friend was telling me about the “God thread” she saw woven in the story of her youngest son and his new bride. I listened with great interest and anticipation, as I, too, was planning a child’s wedding–my only daughter was engaged.
I’m a visual learner, so her word picture was vivid to me: God at work—weaving His grace, His direction, His purpose into this sweet couple’s love story. It was a beautiful picture, indeed.
As I pondered my friend’s description, I could clearly see God’s hand in my daughter and (now) new son-in-love’s story—a period of blissful dating their senior year in college, breaking up as he traveled to Kenya for a year of ministry, then reuniting as he returned to the States, convicted that God was calling him to “pursue” her again.
They were married June 22.
A couple of my personal observations from this experience:
- Scripture tells us that our own earthly marriages are to be a reflection and symbolic representation of Christ as the husband and the church universal as His bride. His Word tells us that He is the real seeker; Jesus is the pursuer. We don’t have to beg for His attention or dress alluringly to capture it. He is already desperate for us! My daughter’s new husband pursued her—with great intent and a passionate heart. Single ladies, teenagers, I don’t want you to miss that. Jesus finds you lovely and valuable and wants a relationship with you just simply because you are! Any man worth having does the same. You don’t have to play cat-and-mouse games, or pretend to be something you are not, for Him to want to be with you–and to make sure you are secure in knowing that.
- In preparing for the event of their recent nuptials, God reminded me again—and again—at every turn of the strands He’d woven into my own life, namely the many friends, both old and new, who He so gently threaded into this perfect needle—friends who gifted us with their time and talents to help pull together wedding week details, those who said they were praying for us in the days leading up to the wedding, each one a unique and indispensable strand to the completed picture.
Like my own previous, meager attempts at cross-stitching and needlepoint, the “backside” of the work can often appear a bit messy, but flip it over and you can clearly see the intended image of the design. Our lives—relationally and, often, logistically—can seem chaotic, a bit strewn together. But all the while, in and through every encounter, God is weaving something really beautiful.
From Genesis to Revelation, we can see God’s scarlet thread of redemption woven into time, too. In all things, whether in the minute details of our personal lives, or the huge picture of salvation for all mankind—a tapestry of His love, His grace, His providence—all so that we will fall at His feet in complete love and adoration and proclaim, “Holy!”