I love fabric stores. Walking the aisles, I imagine what certain materials can look like sewn into a jacket or draped over a picture window or covering a chair. Fabric stores are a dreamer’s paradise. Full of potential!
When we were in India a few months ago, I was struck by the beautiful fabrics everywhere. It was a visual masterpiece!! My hostess took me to the market & on the streets were beautifully woven fabrics and rugs, hand crafted with care. Before that trip I hadn't thought much about where some fabrics come from or how thoughtfully they're made. I had envisioned machines doing the job, taking for granted the work that goes into the fabric… the design…the care.
The fabric maker isn’t thinking about keeping the material on the loom, but dreaming about what it can become when someone’s imagination takes it and runs. Beauty meets function. Fabric isn’t meant to stay on a bolt, but to be taken down, cut into pieces and sewn into something useful. Last time I checked, people don’t just display rolls of upholstery in the living rooms. They usually purchase a piece of furniture where the material has been stretched over a frame to give us a place to rest. Just as it was designed.
Ok, why the talk about fabric & furniture? I was reading Eph 2:10 this morning and rolling around the word “beforehand.” If I want to BE. who God has made me, then I probably should go back to the BE.forehand… pausing to remember it’s God who ordained my purpose before I even existed. He gave it thought and fashioned me to be to be fitted for something. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
That word workmanship means “a product, i.e. fabric: thing that is made.” It just made me smile to think of God putting me together, preparing me to be stretched out for something good.
We’re like bolts of extravagant fabric, woven together with care, prepared to be fitted into something gorgeous… not to stay safely on the rack so that people can talk about how pretty we are or what we could be. But to let ourselves be stretch into the thing God ordained BE.forehand.
Have you ever dreamed of what He planned for you... BE.fore you came to BE.?
As you can see, there has been a GREAT turnout for the midsummer Bible study!! Here are our ladies watching Beth Moore teach on Hebrews 11:6. There are still two weeks left, if you would want to join us. We would LOVE to see you there.
