We found the little gallery on a back street in La Paz, Bolivia. Someone had persuaded us that we shouldn’t continue our journey without stopping to see this collection of tapestries, woven by the descendants of the ancient Incas.
Our friend had told us it was an experience we would never forget.
He was right—possibly more than he realized.
We were awestruck from the moment we walked through the door. This was more than a unique art form, it had to have been a skill taught from the earliest days of childhood. How else could you explain such a flawless mingling of colors, intricate patterns, and configurations? Marilee and I had seen some of the weavers’ handiwork still on the loom in their villages, but now we were privileged to the completed works in all their glory.
We kept calling to each other from different corners of the gallery.
“Come here and see this!”
“No, you come over here. You have to see this one!”
Finally (and reluctantly) we had to take our leave. On our way out, however, the manager of the gallery caught our attention and motioned to a tapestry overhead, suspended from the ceiling. It was evident he wanted us to see one last weaving.
I glanced up and immediately thought he must have been joking—and was on the point of making a remark about the ugliness of that large woven work overhead. Did I say ugly? That really doesn’t even come close. It was a monstrosity. Try as I might, I could detect no plan or symmetry. It seemed a random mass of disconnected blobs of thread.
We tried to be pleasant about it, pasting on phony smiles and politely nodding our heads, but it wasn’t easy. And that’s when we noticed the twinkle in the curator’s eye and the mischievous smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
Finally, it sunk in. It dawned on us that we had been staring at the underside of a tapestry, still stretched out on a giant loom above us. Our guide explained that this was actually a custom piece of art that would one day hang in a prominent place in a luxury hotel in Lima.
At that moment, the thought seemed a little far-fetched.
Then he motioned to us follow him up a couple flights of stairs to a small platform. As he flicked on a bank of lights at the top, we found ourselves looking down at the right side of the 12-by-15-foot tapestry.
And it was more wonderful than I can describe.
It might have been the singular most impressive piece of art Marilee and I have ever seen in all our travels to this day. The patterns and colors were beyond belief. The symmetry was exquisite, depicting interrelated scenes of Indian village life in the high Andes. It was stunning. Perfect. As ugly and seemingly haphazard as the underside had seemed to us, the beauty, harmony, and sheer genius of the topside made you quickly forget the alternate perspective.
Having anticipated our reactions, the manager smiled broadly. “There is no possible way,” he said, “for the weavers to create this beauty—without creating the unpleasant underside at the same time.”
An idea began to crystalize in my mind—a life lesson I have carried with me for the rest of my life. I thought about the ugly undersides of our own lives—the hardships, missteps, disappointments, sorrows, and struggles that almost tempt us to despair, and lead us to imagine God has forgotten us. How could the Author of life and beauty and order have anything to do with a such an ugly mass of knots and dangling threads?
I asked the curator if I could take a moment to make a little sketch on a piece of paper. He nodded and said quietly, “Take all the time you wish, amigo.”
On my paper, I sketched the location of some of the marvelous scenes of Indian life depicted in that incomparable weaving. Then I went back downstairs to see what those same scenes looked like from the underside. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed to me that the lovelier and more intricate the depiction on the topside of the tapestry, the uglier and more disjointed it appeared underneath.
It immediately reminded me of Paul’s words to Romans.
We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love….
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What we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later…. (Romans 5:3-5; 8:18, nlt)
The constant promise of the New Testament is that hardships, trials, setbacks, and even tragedies will darken the horizons of God’s children from time to time. The threads of our lives will seem dark, tangled, bunched, messy, and even random. We have probably all muttered the words, Why me? Why now? Why this? If you were to depict it all on a great loom, the resulting tapestry might seem ugly and grotesque. Even repulsive. Who would want to look at it? Even the angels would turn away.
But that’s only a part of the story. And not the most important part.
God is doing something with those threads that we’re not privileged to see. From our perspective on earth, our lives may seem more like a colossal joke than a work of art. We can make no sense of it.
Yet if we could somehow climb a few stairs and look at our lives from the topside, what a difference! The very life events that have pressed us, discouraged us, humiliated us, or wounded us have also refined us, releasing the power, beauty and life of Jesus through our brokenness that would have never been visible otherwise.
And someday, we may be allowed to look back at our lives from a far higher perspective.
God will flip on the lights, and we will be lost in wonder and awe over what He has accomplished in and through us.