The Frame

I love my art. Each of my pieces is meaningful to me--they remind me of places I have lived or visited or of the artist who created it. Each work of art has become like a personal friend, one who graces my home with beauty and interacts with those who visit me. This one, the Blue Nude, painted by my friend Phyllis Jean, speaks to me. Her attitude says, "I'm chillin' in my art studio, surrounded by my Modigliani's. So what?"


'Blue Nude' is a watercolor painted on silk, but others are rich oil paintings of landscapes or people from other lands. There is hand-painted pottery by the Lencan Indians from Honduras and a wood block carved by Italian woodworkers. There are watercolors,  pen-and-ink drawings, a colorful origami crane, and two Nicaraguan sketches painted with coffee on pieces of cardboard. Each is as unique as the artist who created them. 


When I was in college I tried my hand at various artistic endeavors: pottery, knitting, crocheting, quilting, and weaving, to name a few.  After just a few weaving classes, I was a fledgling weaver, turning out pieces of cloth that complied with the basic tenets of the process: it had warp and weft, but that's about it. Years later, as I was going through mounds of accumulated stuff, getting ready for yet another move, my daughter found a small piece of weaving that I had made back then and claimed it for her own. I had it framed for her, and voilá! Art!


The art of tapestry or Oriental rug weaving, on the other hand, is just a bit more complicated and a LOT more magnificent. The weavers tell stories of medieval knights, fierce battles, historical milestones, or they just create incredibly intricate designs. Each story or design is woven into the warp and weft of the fabric, thread by thread, knot by knot. Looking from the back of the tapestry, however, there is no rhyme or reason to it. It just looks like a big mess of knots. You have to go around to the front and step back to get a good vantage point. Only then will it come into focus, and you can clearly see the artist's intent.


I have had the imagery of the tapestry as a metaphor for my life for a while now. The way I have always thought of it was always centered around me: me at the back of the tapestry, knotting the cords one by one, creating my life, one thread at a time. If things didn't make sense or looked like one huge mess, all I had to do was back up and get a good look at the tapestry from a vantage point farther away, so it could all come into focus. Often that happened with the passing of time, as the images unfolded and became clearer in retrospect, and the art emerged as a cohesive, comprehensible whole.


But recently one little phrase in the devotional book Streams in the Desert (February 12th) made me stop and think: "You are the Workman, I the frame."  It is the Workman, not me, who is knotting the cords behind the loom.  My only job is to display His workmanship in the finished, even the unfinished, product. I am the frame-- the part that just holds up the real art, the part that allows God's artwork to be viewed and appreciated. No one even looks at the frame. They look at the artwork.


So, what does the tapestry of my life reveal? I'm sure I won't know until the Workman finishes His artwork and takes me home where it will be displayed in a different realm. But the legacy of my life will remain on this earth, knots and all. Will it reflect His workmanship? What will the knots proclaim, me or Him?


Only the Artist knows for sure what the finished product will be. But I'm trusting that what the Creator began, He will finish, His intent fully known and wonderfully revealed.


And it will be a work of art, knots and all.


"For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. 
I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. . ." Psalm 139: 13-14

"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." Ephesians 2:10