Bless the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing that comes from heaven. 4 God chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless in God’s presence before the creation of the world. 5 God destined us to be his adopted children through Jesus Christ because of his love. This was according to his goodwill and plan 6 and to honor his glorious grace that he has given to us freely through the Son whom he loves. 7 We have been ransomed through his Son’s blood, and we have forgiveness for our failures based on his overflowing grace, 8 which he poured over us with wisdom and understanding. 9 God revealed his hidden design to us, which is according to his goodwill and the plan that he intended to accomplish through his Son. 10 This is what God planned for the climax of all times: to bring all things together in Christ, the things in heaven along with the things on earth.
– Ephesians 1:3-1
Happy Easter to you all! I hope that during this weekend you had time to just express gratitude for God’s work in your life. During this Easter weekend we remember the death and victorious resurrection of Jesus, and how he gives us new life every day. Easter reminds us that God is in the business of redemption. He takes bad situations and transforms them into something good, taking our shortcomings and weaknesses and using them for his purposes.
As I was thinking about Easter, the passage from Ephesians 1:3-10 came to mind. Paul is reflecting here about Easter and what the crucifixion and resurrection mean for us.
Verse 4-6 tells us that God chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless, and that God destined us to be his adopted children, all according to his plan. As I was thinking about the idea of God’s plan, the image of a tapestry came to mind.
A tapestry is a woven piece of fabric art. There’s two ways to look at a tapestry. When we stand back and look at it, tapestries are beautiful. Some of the nicest pieces of art are tapestries, and people hang them on their walls to display them. They can be amazingly detailed, all put together by a weaver with an idea in his or her mind of what the final piece should look like.
But we can also look at a tapestry up close. When we really look at it, tapestries are made up of nothing but small, individual threads. By themselves, these threads look pretty normal, regular, and kind of unimpressive. But in the hands of a good weaver, these unimpressive threads can be put together in a way that contributes to something amazing. In fact, there is no tapestry without these small, seemingly unimpressive threads.
Easter reminds us of the amazing plan of God. In verse 10, Paul gives us some insight into what this amazing plan is: To bring all things together in Christ, the things in heaven along with the things on earth. This is God’s great plan, like God’s great tapestry – that all things would be brought together under Christ.
Like a tapestry, woven into this plan is us – the normal, regular people of God. There are no superstars in God’s kingdom. Like verse 7 says, all of us “have been ransomed through his Son’s blood, and we have forgiveness for our failures based on his overflowing grace.” In a tapestry, there is no one strand that is more or less important than another.
Do you feel like a normal, regular, or even unimpressive kind of Christian? Then you’re in the right place! God’s plan, like a tapestry, is made up of regular, normal strands like us. But it’s in the hands of a good weaver that our lives can become a part of something so much larger.
Those strands in God’s tapestry, God’s big plan, are strands of our faithfulness. Every time we practice listening prayer, or decide to be obedient, or feel a prompting from God and follow it, God can use that kind of faithfulness for something so much more.
I think about this in the context of something like the Food Hub ministry that we’re beginning this week. There is nothing really spectacular about what we do there. We’re not exactly serving surf and turf or doing anything really impressive. But what is most important is that what we’re doing, we’re doing it out of faithfulness to God. As God has called us to serve and be a blessing to others, and God can use these seemingly small acts of obedience for something so much more. It can be a tread in a much larger tapestry that God is weaving through every act of faithfulness.
Lifespring, God is using us – the normal, regular people of God – to be a part of something so much larger, bigger, and more beautiful than we can understand or see. What it will take from us is faithfulness to God in the normal, regular things of our lives. My prayer is that we would always pay attention to that still small voice, and be ready to respond with faithfulness.