The Persian Carpet Lesson

I like the illustration of the Persian carpet: it taught me a wonderful lesson once when I was in Persia, and especially when 1 was able to confirm it recently by a conversation with a Persian student in the train. When they are making a Persian carpet, or a Persian rug, they have planks across it at different levels on which little boys sit who are working away, and the artist is behind on the other side, and he shouts his instructions to them, and tells them what to do : and as he speaks to them so they move their colour or their pattern.

In the carpet there are the colours blue, green, red: but in a real Persian carpet you may find a little yellow dot as big as a shilling. It ought not really to be there. Perhaps you will find that there is a black where there should be a red. I asked this Persian student in the train, uWhat happens when one of the boys makes a mistake?”

“Well,” he replied, “quite often the artist does not make the boy take out the wrong pattern or colour. He weaves the mistake into his pattern.” Is not that a parable of life? We are working on the wrong side of the carpet.

In my ignorance I often put in the wrong colour. And my mistakes, and the mistakes of my fellows, spoil the pattern. But God is such a great Artist that He can take my mistakes and weave them into His own perfect purpose and plan.

No mistakes can be made that He is not ready enough to weave into loveliness. Nothing can divert His purpose ultimately, or finally spoil His plan.

I believe that if we go on co-operating with God in faith, putting our lives into His hands, He will one day bring us to the goal of our desires, and to the goal of His divine purpose. Leslie D. Weatherhead From Why Do Men Suffer? published by Abingdon-Cokesbury, p. 124.