Episode 95 - Something from Nothing

Knitting is basically wizardry. You start off with a ball of wool and with nothing else other than a pair of sticks (I’m not sure whether these are best described as needles or wands…). Yet somehow you end up with a hat, or jumper, or a rabbit, or whatever else your heart desires. This week my mum finished knitting me a new jumper and I’m basically using this blog as an opportunity to brag about it. It looks awesome, it has cool little bumps (apparently these are called cables although they look nothing like any cables I’ve ever seen…), it’s super comfortable and it even has a hood!

I’m always amazed when mum finishes one of her knitting projects because quite frankly they never look quite like they could have possibly been made just with a pair of needles. This becomes ever more true having watched the process of the jumper being made. To be honest, there were times when it didn’t really look like it was ever going to become a jumper, a wind sock maybe, but not a jumper. To be even more honest there were times when I thought it had all gone wrong because the bumps just didn’t look right. And yet what looked like mistakes actually became beautiful detailing.

The journey of the wool intertwining with itself to create something unexpected and quite wonderful seems not unlike the journey of my life. I don’t always (read rarely) know where I’m going, and I often seem to be crossing over myself or going backwards, and there are many many bumps in the road, but somehow out of all of it, God makes something beautiful. Or at least that’s what happens when God is in charge of the stitches.

This may surprise you, but I can actually knit too. Okay, no I can’t. I have knitted, but that’s not quite the same thing. Unlike when my mum knits, when I knit, the bumps that form are not cleverly crafted details, they’re just bumps. And there are holes where there aren’t supposed to be holes. And the whole thing is structurally quite unsecure and falls apart at a slight tug or even a stern glance. This too is not unlike the journey of my life when I try to direct my life the way I want rather than the way God wants. Unfortunately I can’t always immediately recognise the difference between cleverly crafted details and straight up mistakes. Fortunately there isn’t a blunder that God can’t repair.

God’s knitting prowess doesn’t end there. In knitting there is something called Fairisle (that’s right, I know the fancy knitting terminology – even if I’m not certain that it’s a real adjective). Fairisle knitting is where a number of different coloured strands of wool are knitted together to create cool looking patterns. And that’s the amazing thing about God. When He knits the story of our lives, he doesn’t just knit them individually, but He knits them all together.   He perfectly Fairisles the stories of the whole universe together so that every strand meets and intertwines with one another at just the right place and at just the right time. I will never be able to fully comprehend just how amazing that is. And when God’s able to perfectly knit together the whole universe, why would I ever possibly want to be knitting my own jumper?