Threading a Needle

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Our doctors these days add an age P.S. to every diagnosis: “You know, when you’re in your eighties you can’t expect to do the same things you used to.” Well, actually, we do expect to, but our expectations are dashed often. For instance, yesterday I needed to thread a needle.

I was trying to do a very simple hemming job, no big deal. I talked to the sewing machine. “I know I haven’t used you for a while but I need you to run perfectly.” Well, I’d barely begun when the thread broke.

I studied the tangle problem and even fixed it, so glad I’d remembered at least one trick my machine liked to play. But the needle still needed threading. I took a deep breath and tried to focus on that tiny hole. My goodness! Was it even there? The needle was so fine I could hardly see it, much less the miniscule eye. The thread looked more like a rope, maybe a limber jump rope. Even when I could get the tiny eye in focus my shaky fingers sent the rope everywhere but through.

It was impossible, as impossible as–well, finding a needle in a haystack.

I reined in my impatient nerves and said, “Now, sweet sewing machine, you know we have to do this. We’ve always done this. We still can.” I bravely began again, trying to see the eye and control my shaky fingers. Occasionally, by twisting this way and that, I thought I could see the tiny eye well enough but the thread refused to feed through.

Finally, I spoke to the Lord instead of the sewing machine. “Please help me do this simple job, Lord.”

After a few more tries I suddenly realized the thread had gone through the eye and I was about to pull it out in my frustration. I sat back and laughed, breathed deeply, and began sewing. There were no more mishaps. That’s the first time in my life that I’ve realized God threaded a needle for me.

Of course age does add wisdom, doesn’t it, at least sometimes? Maybe I just never noticed before that God was threading my needle!

Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you. Isaiah 46:4 (NIV)