TAPESTRY
Written for Valentine’s Day 2021
TAPESTRY
Our moments seem to wander loose, like threads that are unwound.
In colors, shapes, and textures that seem aimless and unbound,
But if you view them rightly, then a picture will unveil,
And intertwining lives will tell a tale.
CHORUS:
He made us one.
He has knit our lives into a unity,
In an image that He wants the world to see.
Woven with love and care, the fabric of our lives
In a beauty from above
Is a picture in a tapestry of love.
There are days when life is wearing, and the tapestry seems frayed.
The fabric seems to ravel and the picture seems to fade,
But the master weaver has a plan to make our lives entwine,
And show the world His image in this sign.
This tapestry is not a work that’s dead and on the wall;
It is breathing; it is growing; it is changing through it all.
Like a living cloth that warms a room, yet lovely to behold,
And in its winding weave a tale unfold.
“In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.” Ephesians 2:20
“Woven with love and care, the fabric of our lives, in a beauty from above, is a picture in a tapestry of love.”
Comment:
What is a tapestry?
You might view it as a jumble of loose threads, a confusion of different colors, shapes, and textures, tangled in knots. And indeed the building blocks of a tapestry are threads, stitches, and isolated bits of color.
But of course it is only when we step back to get the whole perspective that we can really see what a tapestry is. It is an image. It may tell a story or preserve an important moment or place. And in addition to being beautiful or instructive, it softens a room. This is why tapestries have been used throughout history to cover walls in drafty castles and to mute noise in echoing chambers.
This is how I see marriage. Like threads that are knit together, a husband and wife are bound and intertwined in a million moments, feelings, words, actions, and experiences that make up their lives. But the entire picture is one of a unity. The two have become one, a whole. Others too have been woven into this fabric. In fact, each tapestry of marriage is only a panel within the great work of the church and all history that God is weaving, being crafted by God into an image, His image in this world.
The two bear this image of Christ and the Church, and it is there to show and to tell His story, to inspire, delight, and instruct, to comfort and to testify. As Paul says of marriage, “this is a profound mystery.” (Ephesians 5:32) Individually none of the fibers, threads, stitches or other parts of a tapestry have any of the great value and meaning that the whole work has. Just so, God has made us to live together in a beautiful unity to delight us, to inspire the world around us, and most of all, to please Him.
I am so excited to be a part of this work that truly is bigger than just Faye and me. Praise God that we are truly His workmanship, that we are His tapestry of love!
Bill Maynard