Loops and Thread -- and Purpose

“Make the tabernacle with ten curtains of finely twisted linen and blue, purple and scarlet yarn, with cherubim worked into them by a skilled craftsman. All the curtains are to be the same size-twenty-eight cubits long and four cubits wide” (Exodus 26:1-2)

I admit it. Reading through the chapters in Exodus which detail the construction of the Tabernacle can be, well, mind-numbing. Loops and clasps, boards, sockets, pillars, almond blossoms, curtains, poles, pegs and hooks and bands and . . . .

It never seems to stop.

For a people who spent generations slogging through mud pits to make bricks for Pharaoh’s empire, such precision, such detail must have seemed burdensome.

Then I noticed something I’d not seen in my many times reading through these “better-than-a-sleeping-pill” chapters.

I noticed precision.

Every loop had its place. Every socket a reason. Every curtain and hammered blossom and length of thread and slice of wood, a purpose.

Sometimes I get to feeling like I’m slogging through days of fighting traffic, paying bills, and punching time clocks. I wake up, go to work, return home, go to bed, wake up and start all over.

It never seems to stop.

But as I read this text I remembered again something I always forget: In the midst of God’s plan for my life, every loop has its place. Every socket has a reason.

And just as the Tabernacle of loops and sockets and wood and thread was the place God met His people, God meets me – He meets each of us -- even as we slog through traffic jams, punching clocks, and paying bills.

If we wonder about that -- and I have -- we should quiet ourselves long enough for His glory to have a chance to settle into our tabernacles.