Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil.
Proverbs 3:7
I love the way BibleProject defines wisdom, or “fearing the Lord”. It is living by what God defines as good and evil, rather than stretching out your hand towards self- and everything-else-determination, the same fateful choice of the Garden. With this in mind, I’ve come to paraphrase Proverbs 3:7 as: “Don’t decide for yourself what is good and what is evil; seek the Lord’s perspective and respond accordingly.”
I had in mind, and in fact wrote, a post holding the words and verses I felt Jesus had given me the final quarter of 2020. Over the same months, I also returned to embroidery and prayed through the latest election cycle in our nation. I continue to be keenly moved and humbled by two key themes: our absolutely bounded limited utter smallness as humans to grasp a fraction of the holy; and Father God’s absolutely perfect goodness, faithfulness and desire for self-disclosure, completely unfettered by our inability to fully comprehend Him.
The piece of embroidery I picked up shows a pair of cardinals, started a forgettable number of years ago. I got back in the cadence of placing stitch by pixelated stitch, untwisting threads green gray red white brown, tenderly tapping the dull needle with my fingertips to guide it by feel and not by sight. I soon discovered two stitches I’d done in the wrong color years before—and remembered not having the patience or compunction then to do the painstaking work of repenting and picking them out. A metaphor for something, no doubt. This time, I set them to rights as a gentle act of worship and continued in that silent, rhythmic, embodied prayer, recalling with gratitude Father God’s consistency in the way all twenty thousand stitches face the same direction, recalling with affection the wordless, lively vocabulary He and I have developed over the years. Dolphins as a sign of His love. Chipmunks as a sign of His joy. Cardinals as a sign of His faithfulness.
“But if I go to the east, he is not there;
if I go to the west, I do not find him.
When he is at work in the north, I do not see him;
when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him.
But he knows the way that I take;
when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.”
Job 23:8-10
The back of embroidery does not look like much. You can see the colors, but the shapes and details are obscured by thread-ends and whatever strategy was employed to tackle the more involved sections. There is a trustworthy pattern to follow, but doing so is hardly a linear practice; sometimes the needle best traces a circuitous path, a little silver fish that darts and dances and flashes in the shallows of the fabric. Moreover, the front doesn’t look like much if you’re looking at a small enough section or working with one color for too long. It is very much like our lives with God: we don’t always see Him or how He is at work, but we can trust He is, and He is faithfully bringing us forth as gold—something good and beautiful and with a clear narrative arc, no less.
So I come back to Proverbs 3:7, and my desire to name words for 2021, and the pivotal week ahead in our nation. I carefully check my heart with Holy Spirit and hold my desired outcomes alongside submitting to His wisdom, even when it does not look like what I would choose. And I enter 2021, resolving to say with the Psalmist at each stitch and crisis: You are there, You are there, even there.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
Psalm 139:7-10
Fire and Whisper 