Seeing the Tapestry

Sometimes I get so caught up in the day-to-day things that I become blind to the bigger picture of what God is doing.  When you are detail-oriented like me it’s easy to focus on the small things and forget to glimpse God’s overall purposes.  I spend so much time thinking about my daily to-do list, especially in my lesson planning for school that I forget to stop and think about my real purpose in being here. 

My ultimate goal for teaching here isn’t to teach English and science but to teach the children about Jesus.  These kids come from homes where they are often unwanted since they are orphans and are seen as a burden.  They come from communities where witchcraft is prevalent and human sacrifice is not uncommon.  They are surrounded by darkness and desperately need the light of Christ.  It is simply incredible to see the transformation in their lives when they grasp the reality of the gospel, and the very idea that God loves them unconditionally.  That is my purpose in coming to Zambia.  Not necessarily to make these kids better readers, but to teach them their place in God’s Kingdom; to teach them that they matter to God and are never thought of as a burden to him; to model what it means to be a follower of Christ and seek him daily. 

A few weeks ago Patrick spoke about God’s sovereignty at church.  As he was preparing his sermon notes I remembered the illustration of the tapestry.  We see our lives only from the backside of the tapestry so we generally see just a tangle of colored thread.  Only God sees it from the front and sees the true pattern.  He never loses sight of the big picture or his purposes like I so often do.  He is the one who places the individual threads and has a purpose for each one.  God sees the beauty in the details and the whole picture all at once. 

It’s encouraging to me that someday I’ll see the whole picture too.  There are so many times when I think I’m not making a difference at all, but I believe that God really is using all these threads in my life to make something wonderful.  All the times I focus on the day-to-day things, he’s weaving a grand design that I couldn’t even begin to imagine.  I often look forward to the time when everything in my life will make perfect sense, and I will see how God was using me each step of the way.