Make Me a Basket

He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Colossians 1:17 (NIV)

In spite of my best efforts, I can’t keep it together. Unfinished work piles around me. I’m lonesome for my sister, overdue a visit with my elderly mother, and a work deadline looms ahead.

These strands of my life feel brittle, isolated and without cohesion. When I concentrate on my one area, another falls apart. If I focus too much on work, my marriage suffers or the family feels neglected. If I focus only on family obligations, work overwhelms me.

It’s plain to see that I can't do it. When I think of my dilemma, I envision a struggling donkey with an unbalanced load of misshapen sticks juggling precariously on its back. Without something to secure the load, it soon falls apart. Sticks scatter everywhere, the donkey brays a loud complaint, and nothing is accomplished.

This verse in Colossians reminds me that Jesus is the One who holds me together. Though my vision is only partial, He sees the end from the beginning. Though my understanding is incomplete, He knows it all and secures all these areas of my life.

Lord, hold me together. Take these disconnected splinters of my life: my family, my marriage, my faith-walk, my writing life, my health concerns, my work…and from them weave a basket to hold the words you give me, a place from where I can share the nourishment of your light in me. Make me a lovely basket. Soften these unruly strands, knot them, fashion them into a work of art, a basket from which I can feed the world your loaves and smallest of fishes.