Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: TRIAL (05/10/18)
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TITLE: The Wedding Garment | Previous Challenge Entry
By Dave Walker
05/16/18 -
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How beautiful of you to have chosen to weave my wedding garment so that it is like no other on earth.
I see you have woven in it, the passage of your love affair with me, which started even before I was aware of it.
The sunshine of my happy childhood glows from the hem with warm colours that seem to dance as I walk. You loved me even as a child, giving me a loving home; a dad that taught me what it was to be a man, and a mother who kept me safe, bandaging the cuts and bruises of life that little boys suffer as they grow up.
Further up you have embroidered special moments. I am surprised at what gladdened your heart. I thought it would be times such as climbing, at the age of sixteen, Africa's highest peak, setting a flag on the summit of Kilimanjaro, or heading the scouting contingent to the World Jamboree where we met the Queen. Yet in Your eyes, it seems, it was when I sat by a friend when he was ill, and took soup round the streets to the homeless. Then there is a shimmering panel sewn when I qualified as a doctor.
Many portions of it shine with red and gold thread depicting, I think, the time I discovered forgiveness through Your blood and started praying with my patients, or saw them through a difficult illness, encouraging them to trust in You.
Yet, why, Lover of my soul, are there parts of the garment -- fashioned for a joyous occasion -- that drip with tears? I see, reflected in some of the drops, my brother's body, cold, pale and broken in the police morgue as I identified him after his fatal accident; in others, his wife, eyes closed, looking peaceful, but so dreadfully young to die from a mysterious illness. In so very many drops I see my beautiful wife fade into a pale shadow and succumb to the cancer that devoured her from the inside. How they glisten and cascade from my attire in pain and sorrow. And what of the dark tears of years of emotional abuse? Were all these necessary to be woven into my wedding apparel?
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My precious Bride
How dull your wedding garment would be without the teardrops and darkness; and how unworthy you would be to wear it. You do not see it now, but those times -- so necessary for your beauty and your fitness to be my Bride -- have been some of the most valuable moments of your life.. I, your Groom, have been called "A Person for Others". To be fully in Me, as My Bride, you need to be called that, too. It is in the trials that we lose our arrogance and gain sensitivity.. Think how equipped you now are, to show My love to a man who has lost his wife or brother; how much more understanding, for a victim of emotional abuse. You cannot be My bride unless you, too, live for others and have been prepared by trials to do so. Those tears are the most precious parts of your garment.
Come, walk towards Me and I will give you a preview of the wedding banquet. Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:9)
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I'm walking towards You, Jesus. What is this? The tears from my brother’s death are turning to pearls; those from his wife's death, to rubies. I'm gleaming with garnets from the sobbing pain of abuse. And the cascading tears of my wife's death are sparkling diamonds. The tears are gone -- and I'm equipped to love. Thank You, Lord, for these trials.
Oh the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable His judgements ,
and His paths beyond tracing out! (Romans 11:33)
Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife has made herself ready. And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. (Rev19:7,8)
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