How is my life in action?
It is finished.
You will recognise these as the words which Jesus spoke from the cross on that first Good Friday. But that wasn’t what triggered the words in my mind. It was completing my Lent Knitalong project on Good Friday.
This was a new venture for me, but I liked the idea of following a series of devotions at the same time as following a set of knitting instructions. We knitters knew that it would make a cushion cover, but had no idea what the design would be.
It was 40 days of intense concentration following the pattern, and counting carefully. I went wrong more than once. Most mistakes could be unravelled and re-knitted, but there is one part where I will just have to live with a permanent reminder of where I went wrong and couldn’t put it right. But it still makes a perfectly usable cushion cover, even with the mistake.
It has spoken a great deal to me during those days as a metaphor for life and God’s master plan for it. It has reminded me of how only God knows the final picture of what my life will look like when it is finished. How seemingly random changes in the stitching create an unexpected extra to the final design, and seemingly random events in my daily life will add something special to it. Some rows were quite dull and repetitive. Some frustrating, but some were quite fun as the pattern was slowly revealed.
Through it I was reminded of how I need to pay close attention to the instructions, and I noticed that it has been when I became a little cocky about knowing how the pattern went without checking, that I most often went wrong. But just as I have a Saviour who is always there to help me pick up the pieces, the pattern could usually be corrected too.
The final picture is of an Easter scene, and a clear message has chimed through…
…It is precisely because of Christ’s work being finished on the cross that I am able to live out my own life design through His strength and forgiveness. Without it, the picture on my cushion cover would look very different, as would my life. So thank God for those words, ‘It is finished’. Because of them my life is complete.
Shirley Rossall, Friend of Inspire, UK
