The God Who Knits

Although most of the time we don't know what the pattern of our lives is, God does.

BY: Lori Erickson

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She knows that we are linked to those in local homeless shelters and to those who are spending their last days in hospice care. She knows the patterns that connect us and she sees the beauty that emerges only with time.

And I suspect that she knows that sometimes frogging is the best way to fix a mistake. I think I’ve been frogged a time or two, times when it felt like my life was being pulled apart. Looking back, I can almost hear the chorus of “Rip it! Rip it!”

Painful as that process is, sometimes I get glimpses of the new pattern that can appear. One came a few months ago when I read a Newsweek article about the work being done by the Rev. Patricia Bulkley and her psychologist son Kevin Bulkley. The two have spent years studying the extraordinary dreams often experienced by people who are close to death. As people come to the end of their lives, often peace and comfort come in profound and surprising ways in their dreams.

In the article, the story was told of a man who was struggling mightily to find meaning at the end of his life. Shortly before he died, he had a simple dream that changed his entire perspective on his life. In the dream he found himself watching a room full of dancers moving to music. And as he watched, the people in the dance began to leave behind them strands of light, light that formed ribbons that wove a beautiful pattern as they moved about the floor.

Later he told the dream to Rev. Bulkley, ending with these words: "There really is a plan after all, isn't there?” he asked. "Somehow we all belong to one another."

I try to remember that image on the days when it seems like random chaos rules my life. We belong to one another, and we belong as well to the one who has knit us together in our mother’s wombs, the one who has the patience to see the pattern of our lives gradually emerge, the one who isn’t afraid to frog the yarn. The God Who Knits.

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