God takes the fragmented pieces of our story and some how brings them together to create his vision for something beautiful. We might not see it until our story has come to it's completed end, but we will see it.
This is a promise.
because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:5,6 NIV
I was working on a wall hanging this past fall. I wanted to have something positive to meditate on in big bold letters, right in front of my face, to help me get through my new life without my daughter. I chose Jeremiah 29:11 and as you can see it was a process. (Scroll through the pictures above to see the finished product)
I had a plan for the completed project but because of the amount of space and the size of my lettering I had to figure out how I was going to fit in the whole verse.
So step by step I tried to fit each published Biblical version into this space. Nothing was fitting.
In the end, I condensed and combined a few versions and came up with my own. ("God, please don't strike me down" ... I'm pretty sure there's grace for that...because I'm still here...whew!)
This was NOT my original plan. I thought this project would be fairly simple and quick to execute. I had planned to lay out the lettering, paint it, and then mount it all in one day.
It didn't quite work that way. In fact it took me a lot longer than I had anticipated and at one point I was so frustrated I almost gave up.
Truthfully, it was so close fitting all of the lettering in, I wondered if I was going to come to the end of the space and find out that I hadn't enough room to complete the verse.
All along I was wondering if I had ruined it and was going to have to count this project as a "practice". (As you can see, I couldn't even fit the biblical reference)
In the end, I finally saw how all of the pieces were going to fit together. -and when I say "end", I mean "end" as I was down to the last few letters!
That's when I could see the whole picture, look back at the whole process, and realize that the words wouldn't have been personalized if I hadn't gone through the struggle.
A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps. Proverbs 16:9 KJV
I've realized that I make plans and when my life doesn't go as planned, I have a choice. I can crawl into a dark cave, get mad, hate the world, hate God or I can accept that my life's story isn't done yet and choose to believe for something more. Something good. Something beautiful.
...he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion ...