For more than 25 years, I have professionally rewoven chair seats and other furniture pieces that incorporate caning or wicker. Designs and patterns are a part of my life. The design of each piece of furniture that requires weaving is for a specific type of seating material. The design of the chair’s structure must support the seating the builder has in mind when they construct the chair. Restoring the chair’s seat requires understanding the design elements and envisioning what the original builder imagined when they built the chair.
Each of our lives has a specific design. Some of us have a very constant repeating pattern in our lives. We go through our days using the same routine for years without any changes. For others of us, our life feels more like a haphazard patchwork of events. Nothing stays the same from day to day. Some, like me, prefer to work undisturbed and focused. Like my wife, who is a nurse, others enjoy working in the middle of chaos, saving lives. Neither person is right or wrong. We just are designed for different things. No two life experiences are the same. We all have some things we do better than others.
When we live in God’s shadow, we recognize that He is the designer of all life and has a specific plan for our lives. We cannot always see the design in our life. Sometimes life feels haphazard and chaotic. We may even worry that God has run out of ideas with us and is experimenting to see if anything will work. God has a plan. We will not always understand everything that happens in our lives. Sometimes we may feel that we do not understand anything that is happening. Yet every event and circumstance has a purpose.
Following instructions can be challenging. Inability to see the end product emerging as we follow each step makes this especially true. Once I had a client bring me a piece that required an advanced weaving pattern called “spider weave.” I found instructions and began to replace the weaving. Even though I followed the instructions carefully, I could not see the proper pattern emerging. I worried that I had missed something or failed to understand the instructions. Then as I was putting the last set of strands into place, the pattern suddenly appeared.
We like to understand everything that happens, and we want to believe that we comprehend the context. There will be things we cannot explain and things we cannot put into proper context. What design element was God incorporating into my life when my oldest daughter started her life in the Neo-natal intensive care unit, and we were unsure if she would survive? What crazy design element was my wife having cancer? What is God designing when it seems like your goals are at your fingertips and then disappear like a mirage? Unfortunately, I cannot explain the reasons for any of these or even promise that you will eventually understand the reason for everything. I encourage you to wait for the Master Designer to complete the pattern He is weaving in your life.
A key design feature in every life is encouraging each person to develop a close relationship with God. Some people fight this element, and others embrace it. Scripture tells us of a time when the Israelites were slaves to the Egyptians. (Exodus 1) Just before Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, God sent several unusual design elements into both people groups’ lives. (Exodus 7-11) The Egyptians appeared to have rejected the invitation to know God and suffered the consequences. The Israelites chose to embrace God and follow His design for them, enabling them to find freedom from their slavery.
Occasionally, I get a chair project that has a surprise element in the seating. Some of the chairs I reweave have hollow spaces under the seat. Paper and cardboard usually fill these spaces. I find lots of dust, bugs, and crumbs from meals past. Sometimes these voids are stuffed with cornstalks, bulrushes, foreign newspapers, or perhaps nothing at all. (I keep hoping for a chair stuffed with money but no luck so far.) Most of the time, the owner has no idea that there is anything more to the seat than the part they can see. As a professional who reweaves seats, I know about these spaces and look for them. As humans, we have no surprise elements for God. He knows the most hidden places of our hearts and all our secrets. (Psalms 44:21, Ecclesiastes 12:14)
Occasionally a client wants a chair changed to accept a material it was not designed to take. They will bring me something and ask for a more durable seating than what the designer put into it. Sometimes I have to explain that the chair’s design does not permit a change in the media used in the seat. Other times I can make creative adjustments to use another kind of woven seating.
In our lives, we often approach God with requests for changes in the design He is weaving. These requests usually revolve around what we would make our lives easier. Who would not like more time to relax or enough money in the bank never to worry about a bill for the rest of our lives? We ask for the design change and then think God is ignoring us or perhaps is mad at us if we do not receive the change we requested. James wrote about this, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.” (James 4:3, NRSV) When we make ask for things that help us follow God more closely, we are not the only ones blessed by God’s response. There is something about living in God’s shadow that makes us better humans.
If we want the best design for our life, we must trust God to do the creative designing. There is no way better to see the design develop than to live in God’s shadow.