Do you know how scary a blank page can be? It stares back at you wide-eyed and waiting. A blank page is an endless opportunity for creation. You could draw on it, write on it, fold it, cut it, twist it, and the list goes on and on, with each option branching out into more and more ways to turn an empty page into something beautiful and worthwhile. It can be overwhelming to decide which method you’ll choose, and you begin to wonder if you made the right choice or are even equipped to do this. Those thoughts can leave us staring at that empty piece of paper for hours, days, weeks, months, or even years. And sometimes, they cause us to walk away from it completely, leaving the weight of infinite choices behind and returning to what we already know.
My friend, you are not a blank page. You never have been. From the moment you were conceived, the Lord has written out a beautiful story for your life, one that you get to step into every day. Do you know what’s going to happen next? No. But the wonderful thing is that you don’t need to understand how each empty page of your life will be filled. All you need to know is that your Heavenly Father is the one filling them. I know that that takes an insane amount of trust and faith, which can be scary. I’ll admit that I still get scared thinking about what the future holds, whether that’s five minutes from now or five years. But we’ve been called to live by faith as Hebrews 11:1-3 says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.” And faith is built one moment at a time, one step after another, one prayer and then a breath.
Walking by faith isn’t something that happens all at once otherwise, it’d be called jumping into faith. It’s called walking because it’s a beautiful journey that we get to go on. One that we won’t complete until the very end of our days. There will be days of trials, times that we want nothing more than to give up and go home, and moments when we beg God to let us see just a little bit of what He has planned. Yet, in the middle of the wondering and the wandering, we get these unforgettable little moments of faith-building communion with the Lord. It would be much easier to turn to stories that have already been written, masterpieces that have already been painted, and symphonies that have already been composed. But the beauty found in those is nothing compared to what the Lord is weaving in your life.
In 2018 I had the incredible opportunity to visit the Corrie Ten Boom house in the Netherlands. If you don’t know who Corrie Ten Boom was, her family helped hide Jews during World War II. Eventually, she and her whole family ended up in concentration camps. Corrie survived and wrote several books, the most famous one being The Hiding Place which beautifully outlines how she trusted the Lord during the darkest days of her life. At the end of the tour of the house, after hearing the stories, stepping into the hiding place that kept so many people safe, and seeing how the Lord moved through the lives of the Ten Boom family; our tour guide shared this poem with us that Corrie had written:
“Life is but a Weaving” (The Tapestry Poem)
My life is but a weaving
Between my God and me.
I cannot choose the colors
He weaveth steadily.
Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow;
And I in foolish pride
Forget He sees the upper
And I the underside.
Not ’til the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas
And reveal the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful
In the weaver’s skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned
He knows, He loves, He cares;
Nothing this truth can dim.
He gives the very best to those
Who leave the choice to Him.
Faith is not found in the safety of pages filled long ago but in the embrace of emptiness because you know that Lord is doing something new. It can feel like the Lord has no rhyme or reason for what He’s doing in our lives because all we can see is the moment we’re in. But stepping back, we can see that God has been weaving an incredible tapestry in our lives all along. Friend, don’t be scared or intimidated by the blank pages in your life, and don’t feel pressured to fill them all yourself. Take that first step of faith, followed by another and then another. Walk forward into your life, knowing that God is leading and guiding you the whole way.
Simply Katherina 