The Thread of Life - Guest Blog
I have been walking through the last few weeks realizing that God has a plan. Not just a plan for the Big Picture - all is humanity - but a plan for me. An intricate, detailed, strategic, beautiful plan.
It astonishes and amazes me that the God of - well everything- has me in His thoughts. And that He took the time to plan me before the foundation of the world and He created a detailed story called “Melissa”.
Why would I think that? Oh there are so many reasons. I could fill up pages and pages of stories of why I think this. But let me trim it down to one story in my life and a tiny thread in the Bible:
I heard an older cousin and his wife singing at a home service for my sick, lost grandfather. He was very sick and would eventually die, and his family was trying to win him. I was 10. And I remember having the thought, while I watched them sing and play the guitar:
That is what I want. I would like to grow up and have a preaching, singing, guitar playing, preacher husband.
Well, I never thought on it again. 10 years later I would marry a man. Five years before the marriage he would get saved, start preaching, decide to learn to play the guitar, and learn to sing.
Several years into our marriage I would run into my cousin. And later, on the way home, the Lord would let me remember that day and that thought...and remind me that He gave me everything I asked for that night.
Was it my thoughts, was it a prayer, or was it a desire placed there by my Lord? A desire that would stay tucked away, hidden in the shadows of my heart. I would watch my cousin from afar and hold up him and his wife as my example. Until one day I looked around me and the dream was now my reality.
I don’t really believe in chance or coincidence. I believe in God. I believe in Jesus who speaks and worlds appear.
And now my tiny thread:
Joseph — was set up!! All of it — was a well, orchestrated plan. His whole life. A plan to save Israel.
Moses — they were in bondage waiting for someone to deliver them. They waited until he was born. Then they waited while he was raised. Then they waited until he was 80. Then he came and lead them out. But even the plagues and the Red Sea — all of it a great, big, beautiful plan:
The Lord was building His own reputation. Scaring the enemies of Israel. Letting the whole area know who the God of Israel was.
Rahab — where did she lived? On the wall. Easy for spies to get to and get out of. Perfect location. Her trade — she’s an Inn Keeper, a harlot... people coming and going all the time. The 40 years the Israelites are in the desert... the plagues, the defeats of Kings... waiting on Rahab to be born and raised.
Rahab grows up hearing all the stories of the Hebrews God. And then God opens a door and Rahab walks through it and...
A little pagan, harlot girl walks into the lineage of Jesus.
Coincidence...or Plan?
Boaz — he is born to a spy and a pagan harlot. A harlot who committed treason to join God’s army.
Accident... or Design?
Seems insignificant until in Boaz’s older years he would meet:
Ruth — a little Moabite widow girl. She would travel to the Promise Land with no hope of husband or children. She, too, would choose to forsake her land and her false gods to follow Naomi, her mother-in-law, to the Promise Land... to care for Naomi and serve Naomi’s God.
There she would meet Boaz and run right into the plan of God and the lineage of Jesus. Boaz could do nothing but love this woman who had to remind him of his own mother:
Courageous and bold! An instrument in the hand of God!
Are you seeing the bold, beautiful pattern that shows the plan of God?
I look around me and I see His plan in all of creation. How it sings of Him and His wondrous works. I can see the beginnings of the tapestry of life — with a single thread of red woven through the fabric that represents my Jesus.
However, the whole tapestry has an image that He created. All the corners and even the very edges are apart of the image. As important as that red thread is and it’s huge — it’s Jesus — a single thread doesn’t make a tapestry. It’s a piece of thread.
The entire tapestry is made up individual threads. But together they create the tapestry. And if you strategically place the threads based on color, you create a picture. That is what Jesus has done with Life. Your piece of “life thread” has been strategically placed by the Master Weaver.
My heart leaps with excitement to wonder what He has planned for me, my husband, my children, my grandchildren.
And I trust Him. I trust Him to make something beautiful out of our lives. Out of our piece of the tapestry.
Why?
Because — Oh, how He loves you and me!
Melissa Bowers
It astonishes and amazes me that the God of - well everything- has me in His thoughts. And that He took the time to plan me before the foundation of the world and He created a detailed story called “Melissa”.
Why would I think that? Oh there are so many reasons. I could fill up pages and pages of stories of why I think this. But let me trim it down to one story in my life and a tiny thread in the Bible:
I heard an older cousin and his wife singing at a home service for my sick, lost grandfather. He was very sick and would eventually die, and his family was trying to win him. I was 10. And I remember having the thought, while I watched them sing and play the guitar:
That is what I want. I would like to grow up and have a preaching, singing, guitar playing, preacher husband.
Well, I never thought on it again. 10 years later I would marry a man. Five years before the marriage he would get saved, start preaching, decide to learn to play the guitar, and learn to sing.
Several years into our marriage I would run into my cousin. And later, on the way home, the Lord would let me remember that day and that thought...and remind me that He gave me everything I asked for that night.
Was it my thoughts, was it a prayer, or was it a desire placed there by my Lord? A desire that would stay tucked away, hidden in the shadows of my heart. I would watch my cousin from afar and hold up him and his wife as my example. Until one day I looked around me and the dream was now my reality.
I don’t really believe in chance or coincidence. I believe in God. I believe in Jesus who speaks and worlds appear.
And now my tiny thread:
Joseph — was set up!! All of it — was a well, orchestrated plan. His whole life. A plan to save Israel.
Moses — they were in bondage waiting for someone to deliver them. They waited until he was born. Then they waited while he was raised. Then they waited until he was 80. Then he came and lead them out. But even the plagues and the Red Sea — all of it a great, big, beautiful plan:
The Lord was building His own reputation. Scaring the enemies of Israel. Letting the whole area know who the God of Israel was.
Rahab — where did she lived? On the wall. Easy for spies to get to and get out of. Perfect location. Her trade — she’s an Inn Keeper, a harlot... people coming and going all the time. The 40 years the Israelites are in the desert... the plagues, the defeats of Kings... waiting on Rahab to be born and raised.
Rahab grows up hearing all the stories of the Hebrews God. And then God opens a door and Rahab walks through it and...
A little pagan, harlot girl walks into the lineage of Jesus.
Coincidence...or Plan?
Boaz — he is born to a spy and a pagan harlot. A harlot who committed treason to join God’s army.
Accident... or Design?
Seems insignificant until in Boaz’s older years he would meet:
Ruth — a little Moabite widow girl. She would travel to the Promise Land with no hope of husband or children. She, too, would choose to forsake her land and her false gods to follow Naomi, her mother-in-law, to the Promise Land... to care for Naomi and serve Naomi’s God.
There she would meet Boaz and run right into the plan of God and the lineage of Jesus. Boaz could do nothing but love this woman who had to remind him of his own mother:
Courageous and bold! An instrument in the hand of God!
Are you seeing the bold, beautiful pattern that shows the plan of God?
I look around me and I see His plan in all of creation. How it sings of Him and His wondrous works. I can see the beginnings of the tapestry of life — with a single thread of red woven through the fabric that represents my Jesus.
However, the whole tapestry has an image that He created. All the corners and even the very edges are apart of the image. As important as that red thread is and it’s huge — it’s Jesus — a single thread doesn’t make a tapestry. It’s a piece of thread.
The entire tapestry is made up individual threads. But together they create the tapestry. And if you strategically place the threads based on color, you create a picture. That is what Jesus has done with Life. Your piece of “life thread” has been strategically placed by the Master Weaver.
My heart leaps with excitement to wonder what He has planned for me, my husband, my children, my grandchildren.
And I trust Him. I trust Him to make something beautiful out of our lives. Out of our piece of the tapestry.
Why?
Because — Oh, how He loves you and me!
Melissa Bowers
This is soooo good, Melissa! I needed this reminder that He lines EVERYTHING up in advance...no accidents and no coincidence!!
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