The Tapestry

One of the analogies that I find helpful in looking at the world and trying to believe in God’s providence is that of a tapestry, in which one side is a beautiful picture and the other is a mess of tangled threads. Things here on earth often look so bleak: war, violence, poverty, natural disasters, genocide, hatred, fear. It easy to be pessimistic about the direction the world is heading in and to question whether God is really acting still. The tapestry is an image that reminds me that I have a limited perspective. In the economy of salvation, only God knows why things look the way they do here on the underside of the cloth.

This analogy is used in a poem called “The Tapestry” by Corrie ten Boom. In it, she writes that life is a weaving project between her and God, wherein God chooses the colors:

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.

Corrie is a Holocaust survivor. Her family’s firmly-rooted Dutch Reformed faith told them that they must resist the Nazis, so they hid Jewish people in their home and passed secret messages for members of the resistance. They were discovered and arrested. Corrie’s father, Casper, died in prison while she and her sister Betsie were sent to Ravensbruck. There, she and Betsie ministered to the other prisoners, praying every day and accepting with grace the hardships of the camp. Betsie died there; Corrie was released. In her book, The Hiding Place, she demonstrates over and over again that she could see, with the eyes of faith, a beautiful picture.

Heavyweight and Faith

Knowing my love for a good podcast, a friend sent me a link a while back. “You must listen to this ‘Heavyweight’ episode with John Green.” Intrigued, I fought through initial resistance (“Isn’t he that famous YA author?”) and put it on.

It turns out that John Green (the famous YA author) was an aspiring minister in his early twenties. He planned to attend divinity school and took on a chaplain apprenticeship at a hospital. One night on call, John witnessed horrific suffering when a three-year-old burn victim was rushed in. Nothing that John had seen before had prepared him for this. Even the doctors and nurses working that night were breaking down in tears and getting physically ill. Leaving the hospital afterward, John knew that his plans to be ordained were ended. “I couldn’t see God within those experiences,” he says, “I just couldn’t. And I, I thought, you know, how can you do this as a job? If part of you is sitting there thinking…the God I am calling to be present in this moment… I don’t feel present in this moment.” John had a simple intuition that night: God was not there. So perhaps God didn’t exist at all. He stopped going to church. But he never stopped praying for the child—Nick is his name – and his family.

Almost twenty years later, John was ready to ask, “What happened to that child?” John was overjoyed to discover through social media that Nick was alive, and that his parents were still married; the family had made it through. But John wanted more, notes podcast host Jonathan Goldstein; John wanted to know, “Is he okay?” He wrote Nick a letter, asking if the young man would be open to a conversation. Nick agreed. What resulted is a short, simple, and moving account of how one event bound two people together in a mysterious way.

Nick is 24 and in graduate school when the recording takes place. He is a devout Baptist; a Christian who takes his faith seriously. After his initial recovery at a special hospital for burn victims, Nick spent much of his childhood in and out of the hospital, and he still cannot feel parts of his right hand. He lives with what he describes as a “constant background noise of pain.” Then, unprompted, Nick says, “But it brought my family to Christ in a way that it would not have otherwise.” His family started attending church regularly only after the accident. He describes being angry at times but accepting that all things work for good for those who love God (referencing Romans 8:28). As host Goldstein notes, “Because of that day in the ER, Nick and his family’s faith was made stronger while John’s was made weaker.”

As John and Nick converse, the different lens through which each looks at the same event is striking. John looks at how innocent Nick was and how much he suffered; Nick looks at how this event brought his family to God. John says that he is constantly battling against despair, nihilism, and meaninglessness; Nick exudes purpose and a faith that has been tested and won out, sounding relaxed and more concerned for John than for himself. Nick expresses surprise that his accident had such a profound impact: “It’s definitely remarkable to see… an individual that came into my life at such a traumatic event and for such a short amount of time, and to have made such an impact in this. I can definitely see the Lord working.” It seems that, paradoxically, the person with the more durable scars from the accident is John. John walked away from God because he could not make sense of Nick’s innocent suffering; Nick and his family walked toward God for the exact same reason.

John and Nick seem to be threads weaved together by one tragic accident. For 18 years, John prayed for Nick every night, even when he could not pray for himself, and when he did not know if anyone was listening. Nick must have benefited from those prayers—the prayers of someone he did not even know existed— and in part because of them, he become a strong Christian man who has overcome many obstacles. It is possible that John even, unknowingly, bore some of the anger and grief that would have come to Nick otherwise. We cannot know any of this for certain, but I believe that we will someday.

In the meantime, Nick noticed something that John did not: that praying for Nick meant that John did not, in fact, walk away from God as completely as he thought he did. Nick said, “Praying for me… I really hope that’s helped keep the dialogue between you and the Lord fluid and going.” John replied, “You know, I never thought of it that way, Nick. It is true that on the days when I prayed for nothing else and felt no real meaning in, in prayer, that I still prayed for you and for your family. And that, that was a point of connection.” It is almost as if Nick looked at the top of the tapestry for a moment to show John that there was a picture there, even if the underside was a mess.

Sudden Cutting of the Thread

I lost my dad suddenly and unexpectedly in January. I was not prepared, nor was the rest of our family. He was 72, still getting around pretty well, scheduled to teach a class a few days later, and had a normal, relaxed Saturday night playing a word puzzle with my mom. Sunday morning, he was just… gone. It made no sense. It still makes no sense.

The first week after my dad died is a blur of shock, grief, and pain, with the funeral as one bright spot in an otherwise dark time. The weeks and months following have brought waves of grief, coming and going at unpredictable times: getting off the metro downtown and crying – really crying, ugly crying—when only 5 minutes ago I was fine; being a lector at daily Mass, reading the words, “teach them to your children and to your children’s children,” and breaking down; seeing a man who looks much older than my dad was and asking automatically in my head, “Why does he get to live?”

There are two ways for me to go in my grief. Two lenses: John’s or Nick’s; The underside of the tapestry or the picture on top. The choice is and always will be a leap of faith. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to enlighten darkness and, staying with the tapestry analogy, to turn the fabric. Most times, I just see the tangled threads. But at my dad’s funeral, I caught a brief glimpse of the picture that his life made, with many people from all walks of life coming to show their respect for him. And there have been moments in the last seven months where the Spirit has come, just as unexpectedly as the tears, to remind me of things that my dad said or did, or to show me something in the present that is irrevocably changed because he is gone. Christ has allowed me to see the suffering of others in a new light, and the shortness of this life. Today I can say truly that I am grateful for the tapestry I am a part of, even while I stare at the threads on the underside.

Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash