Threads That Endure
When my son Caleb was born, my mom made him a blanket.
It wasn’t anything flashy, just soft, simple yarn in a blue-green colorway with a pretty teal silk bunting; beautiful and unique, just like Caleb. She spent hours knitting it before he arrived, choosing a pattern she had used before, her hands working with both intention and love. I’ll never forget the moment she walked into our hospital room in Northern Virginia just hours after he was born, blanket in hand. It was a gesture all the more meaningful because she lived over six hours away in Pennsylvania but had hopped in the car as soon as I told her I was in labor. It was the kind of gift only a grandmother could give, made to be lasting, comforting, and deeply personal.
For the past thirteen years, that blanket has gone everywhere with Caleb. It’s been dragged through airport terminals, stuffed into overnight bags, curled around him during sick days, and now folded neatly with the rest of his bedding each morning (because he doesn’t want to admit he still needs it). It’s frayed along the edges, has a few loose loops here and there, and has stretched to nearly three times its original size. But it’s held together. And it remains one of Caleb’s most treasured possessions. It connects him to his “Gigi,” to his childhood, and to the comfort that’s covered him since the very beginning.
I thought about that blanket during Dan’s message this past weekend, where he referenced the old-fashioned crafts of our knitting and embroidering grandmothers. In Genesis 42, we pick up Joseph’s story: his brothers have come to Egypt during the famine - thirteen years after they sold him into slavery and his subsequent imprisonment. It’s the first time they’ve seen him since that day, though they don’t recognize him. Joseph sees them clearly, and he remembers.
There’s a lot happening in this chapter - tension, testing, conviction - but what struck me most is that Joseph, even after everything, never let go of the thread of who he was. He may have been stripped of his robe and thrown into a pit, but the things that mattered - his faith, his compassion, his deep sense of family - had endured. Like that blanket, his steadfast trust in God had held together, even through all the stretching, fraying, and time.
Reconciliation doesn’t always come quickly. Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes it starts with testing, or silence, or even pain. But that doesn’t mean God isn’t at work. In Genesis 42, God is quietly knitting things back together. We may not see the full pattern yet, but the restoration has already begun.
Like Caleb’s blanket, some parts of our lives will show wear over time. Relationships stretch. Joy wanes. Life gets messy. But the love that was there from the start - God’s love - never unravels. He holds it all together, even when we can’t.