Can You Crochet?
While at a church for a missions conference, I met a kind older woman named Bobbie. We chatted on and off during the entire conference, and I discovered one of her favorite things to do in her spare time is to crochet. I admitted to her that, while I could do a little sewing, I had never learned to knit or crochet. She smiled and told me how she was teaching others the craft. “It’s really easy,” she said. “The biggest problem most people have is they want to hold on too tight.”
Outwardly, I retained my smile, but inwardly, the Holy Spirit was pricking my heart. (For all I know, He was using crochet needles to do it!) Holding too tightly. I know a thing or two about that. . .unfortunately. For some reason, my warped thinking has me believing that as long as I’m holding tightly to my dreams, goals, plans, etc., I’m in control. Yup, I’m deceived that everything will be just fine and work out just right as long as I stay tense and stressed and worked up. How crazy is that?
And yet, that seems to be how I live day after day. I don’t want to. I don’t mean to. I’ve prayed a million times for the Lord to help me not be that way. And while I have made progress, more often than not, I realize I’m holding too tightly again. According to Bobbie, holding the needles and thread too tightly causes the creation to bunch and look a bit warped (my word, not hers). That sounds about right because that’s how I feel when I’m wound up too tightly. I feel bunched, warped, out of shape, and oddly enough, out of control.
In my Bible reading this morning, I came across a familiar passage, but the last verse caught me off guard. I know I’ve read it a million times, but today, it was like seeing it for the first time, and I laughed. At that moment, I was happy to know I wasn’t the only one who struggled with figuring out how to do the things we know we’re supposed to do.
“For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.”
Did you see that? Even Paul says, “I want to do the right thing, but I have no idea how to perform it!” I feel your pain, Paul! I live that battle day after day, and you know what? That’s life on fallen earth. Paul goes on in this passage to conclude it’s a battle of flesh versus spirit. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The spirit is saved, but the flesh is not. And after making that conclusion, Paul cried, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
Paul may have been a tentmaker, but from reading his works, I’d say he probably wouldn’t be very good at crochet either. I think this passage, though somewhat discouraging, is also a blessing. Though it reminds us that the war between flesh and spirit is endless on this side of Heaven, it also gives us hope in knowing we’re not fighting alone. It urges us to keep trying to do those things that are right and good, even loosening our grip and surrendering control.