A Crown from Chaos
Take a good look at the picture above. What captures your attention?
Is it difficult to see anything beyond the chaos and confusion? Do the knots and gnarls direct your attention to everything that’s wrong? Would you consider it a colorful pile of messy mistakes that’s simply not worth the trouble?
Do you see yourself?
Does it depict the diagnosis? The disagreement? The divorce? The depression? The debt?
Maybe the twists and tangles within the threads resemble your marriage. Or the threadbare places portray the gaps in a complicated relationship—full of holes and heartache. Perhaps the image conjures up the conflict between you and your teenage daughter who’s reeling from rebellion or your adult son who’s running from responsibility. Or it may remind you of the one that you’re desperately praying for—the one so completely entangled in Satan’s lies, they don’t even realize they’re lost in them.
To you it may designate every single wrong turn in life, and the shame and guilt and pain of the past has you tied so tightly to it, you don’t even remember where it ends and you begin. You work and work to keep it tucked away, terrified that someone will see that you’re the colorful pile of messy mistakes that’s just not worth the trouble.
Self-preservation is tightly stitched into the fabric of our souls, woven into and out again and again, like the brightly-colored thread on a piece of needlepoint. As a result, what we share with others is the neatly-framed front—pretty, pristine and presentable. But the back? It’s a tangled, twisted, tortured display, all gnarls and knots and stretched-out shortcuts.
Can you see this in your own life? I sure can. What we present to the public is all put-together, but the underside undermines the forgery within the frame. And the enemy makes us feel as if we’re the only ones concealing a matted-up mess; every gnarl and knot and stretched-out shortcut evidence of every time we fell or failed or faltered.
Oh, someone needs to hear today that you are not the only one trying to keep your tangled, twisted, tortured background from unraveling. We all are.
And someone needs to hear that in the middle of your mess is a miracle in the making, and within the chaos is a crown.
“You are altogether beautiful, My love; there is no flaw in you.” -Song of Solomon 4:7
I was recently in the home of a precious friend who had this verse beautifully displayed against a window at the end of her kitchen table. I’ve read these lyrics that tell the story of the king and his beloved many times, but that night and ever since, Father God has been purposefully, steadily stitching them into the fabric of the forefront of my heart—all for you.
Your King says that you are “altogether” beautiful. The word in Hebrew is kol. It means the all—the totality of something. At the root, it is to complete, to make perfect, to place a crown upon. In order to see beyond the illusion of framed perfection, we need to stop thinking of ourselves as separate sides of cloth, but rather one seamless artistry. The pretty, pristine, presentable parts of your present as well as the tangled, twisted, tortured pieces of your past. All of it, together, is being stitched into your story, like lyrics to a love song from King Jesus to His Beloved. Can you hear Him singing this over you today?
All together, you’re beautiful to Me. Every part and all sides of you. The things that no one else sees, I do. The shame and the pain and the fear and the failure, I’m stitching into your story with the crimson-red thread of My blood that covers you. Nothing is wasted; it’s part of you, and who you’re becoming. And all of it is being used to make you complete. When I look at you, I see seamless. I see flawless. I see whole. When I look at you, I see Me.
Flawless: Having no defects or faults; especially none that diminish the value of something.
There is absolutely nothing that diminishes your value. Not your messy marriage, or your complicated conflicts. Not your depression, your diagnosis, or your debt. Not the things you did in the past or the things you did this morning. Every single knot and gnarl is part of your story. The holes and the heartache are part of your loved one’s story. You can trust Him with your rebel on the run and have hope for the one that you’re praying for, because the Father’s still stitching together their altogether, too. Will you invite the Almighty into your altogether?
The incomparable Corrie Ten Boom would use the piece of tapestry shown below as an illustration of life. She would first hold up the matted, messy back of the piece displaying the chaos in the threads. Then she’d turn the piece over to reveal the beautiful crown to show that God doesn’t see the missteps of life as mistakes, because He knows you can’t have flawless without failure. And there can’t be miraculous without the mess. Where you see fractured weakness, He sees a complete and finished work. Where you see only chaos, He sees a crown. And He’s still stitching your story.
All of you, together—every inch and every stitch—He calls flawless.
Altogether you are loved.
Altogether you are complete.
Altogether you are beautiful.
And from the chaos, comes your crown.
“Although the threads of my life have often seemed knotted, I know by faith that on the other side of the embroidery, there is a crown.”
– Corrie Ten Boom
