By: Pastor Jarren Rogers

“God works all things together for your good. If the waves roll against you, it only speeds your ship towards the port.” – Charles H. Spurgeon

God is the Eternal Weaver. With his careful fingers and steady hands, He weaves together the threads of our stories. Each person, with their own beginnings, middles, and ends. Each person with their free will to choose. Each person with their own identities and passions. Each person a part of a great blanket being woven by their Creator on the loom of Eternity.

The Great Weaver retrieves a green string to mark our beginning. Over and under the rack of the loom it trails. While the green string is knit into the beginning of our blanket, the Weaver is creating our inmost being; He knits us together in our mother’s womb. The Weaver has begun our story, but He does not continue blindly. He has a plan and a purpose in mind.

The Weaver’s hand goes to His thread basket and pulls out the yellow string. He unravels a few feet and begins to skillfully blend the yellow into the green. Our blanket grows and so do we. We grow from our infancy and learn to cry, to crawl, to walk, to talk, to sing. From baby, we grow into toddler, then into a young child. We gain a personality. We have likes and dislikes. As we grow, God’s grace goes before us. Working in us, protecting us, shaping us.

A humble smile flashes across the Great Weaver’s face as He replaces the yellow string and gathers up the red string. The red string shines like diamonds and sings like angels as the Weaver adds it to our blanket. The red string is not a part of everyone’s blanket but, because of our decision, it finds its way into ours. It is our first knowledge of Him. It is the moment we turned our hearts to Him and came into relationship with Him. The red string carries on throughout the blanket, growing thicker and more radiant as we grow in relation with the Weaver.

While He continues to weave the red string, the weaver’s smile grows wider as He retrieves the white string. The white string finds its way into everyone’s blanket. They are the good days. The day you got your first pet. The day you shot the winning goal and the team carried you on their shoulders. The day you fell in love. The day you married the person you were going to be with forever. The day you bought your first house. The day your child was born. The day they graduated from college.

The white ends, but the red string continues as the Weaver’s smile begins to fade. Through no fault of His own, black string begins to pollute the blanket. It forces itself in every gap and chokes every string. This is the result of sin. The result of a broken world filled with broken people. These are your greatest failures. The moments your most ashamed of. The black string is the times you’ve fallen short. The times you’ve given up. They are your bad days: when you skinned your knee, when your heart was broken, when you lost a loved one, when the doctor told you bad news, when your bills were overdue, when you cried yourself to sleep.

But the Great Weaver is not afraid, He is not surprised, He is not shaken. Without missing a beat, the Great Weaver does what He does best. He begins to weave the black string in and through, over and under. He retrieves a pair of scissors and cuts out lengths of the dark string, others He leaves in its place, some black string He weaves amongst the other colors.

All of the strings are being moved now. Interlacing and interweaving. His fingers are braiding and entwining, snaking and spinning.

Finally, at the End of All Things, the blanket has been finished, but in a way, it has just begun. The Great Weaver stands up from His loom that is Eternity and looks upon the blanket that is you. Then He looks to all of the other blankets that He has woven. They are all connected. All of them are a part of the greater work that He is doing. All of them are a part of His Story. They all are woven together for Good.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).