Another wonderful Sunday the Lord has gifted us today, the overcast sky so beautiful in its layers of ashen whites and grays and purples and blues. The layering of the clouds looked like the peaks of a distant mountain range on the western prairies. I love watching the clouds color up and float away, dropping their silver raindrops. Today was all kinds of weather wrapped up in one day — cool, rainy, cloudy, windy, sunny, warm, misty, clear. Guess Mother Nature was getting all her ducks in a row to spin her lottery wheel in the direction of winter for tonight. It’s a rainy 48 degrees tonight as I write my words.

My yard was teeming with songbirds today. Lots of male cardinals, so beautiful in their bright red plumage, their female partners just as beautiful in their muted isabelline colors. The purple finches and the goldfinches joined the cardinals on the bird feeders. I saw a few titmice and chickadees. Older brother came by and it was raining. We sat in the lady den and talked about all the birds we’re seeing on our feeders lately. When he left the sun was drying out the clouds and it was warm enough for some porch pondering. I love living where we experience four seasons. Can’t imagine living any where I couldn’t enjoy the seasons changing and the gifts each one brings.

Was reading some old blogs of mine from 2023 and came across this quote — “I am pieces of all the places I have been, and all the people I have loved. I’ve been stitched together by song lyrics, book quotes, adventures, late night conversations, moonlight, and the smell of coffee,” Brooke Hampton. I love this quote and I love thinking of our lives as a worn tapestry. God weaves the tapestry of our life from all our experiences, our memories, and our emotions. Colorful threads shape the designs of our tapestry reminding us of the people we’ve loved and we’ve lost, helping us remember our adventures and our journeys with family and friends. Our tapestries are threaded with all the beautiful colors of the earth, strong threads knotted and occasionally broken.

When we turn the tapestry over, we see the knots and broken threads on the back of the tapestry, representing the trials and challenges that sometimes cloud our lives. These broken threads are woven over and knotted tight, made stronger by our faith. God weaves in the beauty of the small everyday moments, too. In times of great joy and in times of great sorrow our tapestries are sewn stronger by God’s hands with the threads of his steadfast love and grace. Colossians 2:2 reads, “I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God.”

I love this poem by Grant Tullar. Life is But a Weaving (The Tapestry Poem) — “My life is but a weaving between my God and me. I cannot choose the colors. He weaveth steadily. Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow; and I in foolish pride forget He sees the upper and I the underside. Not ’til the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly will God unroll the canvas and reveal the reason why. The dark threads are as needful in the weaver’s skillful hand as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned. He knows, He loves, He cares; nothing this truth can dim. He gives the very best to those who leave the choice to Him.”

We’re all connected through the wondrous colors of thread that are woven through our life’s tapestry, intermingling with each other to create a beautiful work of art. Not every stitch is perfect but the broken threads give character to our tapestry. We need to cherish every spool of God’s thread that helps design our tapestry. Our lives are a woven tapestry of God’s love that defines who we are.

“Life is a tapestry woven from moments of joy and sorrow, love and loss.” — by Khuzema Ahmed