8743

“Brothers and sisters, think of what you were…”
—1 Corinthians 1:26 NIV

When did burlap become the darling of DIYers?

2012 had to be the Year of Burlap. I saw burlap wreaths, burlap tote bags, burlap table cloths. I even saw beautiful wedding tables covered in cream silk and roses, done up with burlap runners. Yep, it’s true.

I even saw that Restoration Hardware was selling Burlap pillows. (I confess, I bought one for Brittni; I think they are cute.) Imagine what you would look like after a night with your face pressed into one of them!

“Hey what happened to the side of your face?”

“Nothing…it’s my new burlap pillow.”

At Virtue, we are forever trying to think up gifts for our ladies. As we are always budget-conscious, this can be a challenge.

I laugh about the elaborate ideas we’ve dreamed up that either went afoul or just about killed us in the making. Once we stripped this groovy bark off trees for candle displays. Only later did we discover the gnarly spiders we had carried in the armfuls of bark. They were not too happy to be entombed in our pristine glass containers.

Or what about the bright idea someone had of a 30-page prayer notebook—one page for each day of the month. Sounds doable until you hear that on each page were 10 card slots that had to be stuffed with a different prayer request. Multiply that out by the 575 notebooks we needed for our registered women and you come to almost 225,000 cards needing to be sorted, arranged in order, and stuffed into the proper slots! What were we thinking? (I’ll take the blame for that one.)

So anyway, back to the Year of Burlap. We designed burlap journals. We decided to cut, glue, trim, and “bedazzle” each journal with a handmade burlap flower closure, embellished with a vintage button and sparkly jewel.

The church workroom, parking lot, and everyone in the crew got covered, head to toe, in burlap fibers. The lucky team that glued them looked like their fingers belonged on a Furby.

Ah, so much for working with cheap, easy-to-disintegrate, prone-to-fraying material! How much better it would be to work with something more expensive, prettier, and lasting, like…silk or cashmere?

Apparently God thinks differently.

The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:26–31 (NIV):

“Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: ‘Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.'”

Think of working with burlap as a metaphor of God’s work in our lives. We come to Him roughed up, cheap, and common. And He looks at us and asks, what can I do with them? He takes us, and using the raw material of our lives, makes something beautiful.

I think we should boast in the fact we are “burlap people.” Most of us were not much by human standards, not highly educated, not terribly special, or influential. So if anything good comes of our lives, we can give God the credit! We have an amazing Designer who, 2000 years ago, veiled Himself of glory, and humbled Himself by dying for us on the cross of shame. He was willing to get His hands dirty so he could make us like Him…beautiful!

Paints, brushes, and a 38″ x 16″ canvas were all it took Vincent Van Gogh to create a masterpiece called Fifteen Sunflowers. It sold March 13, 1987, for $39,921,750.