Remembering can be a painful thing. Sometimes it’s hard to think about certain phases or seasons of our life because it feels like nothing good lies beneath that particular blanket of the past. Either other people hurt us too deeply or we messed up too royally for there to ever be beauty that lies underneath the ashes.

But that’s not what God’s Word tells us. Throughout the pages of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel, and Hosea, He promises His people that not only does He redeem their past, but He restores their past, weaving it back together from the torn and broken fragments lying around them.

Sometimes we do not see this redemption or restoration until we are with Him in our eternal Home, but sometimes He lets us see glimpses in the here and now. And when we do, we stand amazed. Astonished that anything good could come out of such ashes.

Kenneth Bailey says it this way in his book The Good Shepherd :

“Jeremiah asks his readers to remember the Lord who returned them from ‘the north country.’…How much they had suffered was not forgotten, but neither was it their primary focus….What mattered was their redemption and their Redeemer, not their suffering” (p. 73).

I don’t know what suffering you have in your past, but I do know that the same Weaver who wove a Suffering Savior and Redeemer through the pages of Israel’s history can weave that same Savior through the pages of your history. My prayer is that He gives you eyes to see and thankful hearts to receive the blanket of beauty He is weaving.

“The Blanket”

I took time this morning

To peer under the blanket of my life.

The hues, they astonished me,

In all their darks and brights.

I found treasure underneath

The rough texture on the top,

I found treasure underneath

That had grown and never stopped.

So take time to peer beneath

The blanket of your days,

And what you find is waiting

Is the weaving of your ways

With threads of goodness, threads of beauty,

Threads of hidden joys,

Woven while you slept on a loom of faithful love.

Because the past is not the past

As you remember or you’ve made it.

The past is the Weaver’s

And underneath is all His blanket.

Our past is set upon His loom

And mended with His Hands

And heals in beautiful, mysterious ways

While conforming to His plans.

So set aside the lens of dark

And seething bitterness,

And put on the lens of a thankful heart,

Watching for His hope.

What you will find waiting

Beneath every blackest sorrow

Is the Shepherd and the Weaver

Who has never ceased to follow

The rhythms and the patterns and the evils of your days

With covenantal, faithful love

Bought back from all your sorrow.

~Susannah Baker, September, 2015

 

“The God before whom my fathers

Abraham and Isaac walked,

The God who has been my shepherd

All my life to this day,

The angel who has redeemed me from all evil,

Bless the lads;

And may my name live on in them…”

Genesis 48:15-16