"When they are making a Persian rug, they it up vertically on a frame, and little boys, sitting at various levels, work on the wrong side of it. The artist stands on the right side of the rug, the side on which people will tread, and shouts his instructions to the boys on the other side. Sometimes a boy will make a mistake in the rug. . .'What happens when a boy makes a mistake? ''Quite often the artist does not make the little boy take out the wrong color. If he is a great enough artist, he weaves the mistake into the pattern.' . . . You and I are working on the wrong side of the rug. We cannot watch the pattern developing. I know I put in the wrong color very often. I put in black when God meant red, and yellow when he meant white; and the other workers with whom I make my rug make mistakes, too. Sometimes I am tempted to say, 'is there anybody on the other side of the rug-, am I just left to make a mess of my life alone? Is there anybody there?, Then, through the insight which comes back with returning faith, I realize that instead of making me undo it all or letting my life's purpose be ruined, God puts more in. I wonder if sometimes He alters the pattern? It isn't what it might have been; but because he is such a great artist I haven't quite spoiled everything. So, at the end, when he calls me down off my plank and takes me round to the other side, I shall see that just because He is such a great artist, no mistakes of mine can utterly spoil His plan. If only I will work with Him, 'simply trusting every day.' I think one day I shall find my mistakes a my calamities and my distress and my failures a all my pain, woven into the pattern, and I shall so 'it is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eye Some such faith I must have to believe in a God of love who puts us into a world where things can so utterly wrong" (Leslie D. Weatherhead Men Suffer? pp. 134,135).

Guardian of Truth XXXII: 17, p. 516
September 1, 1988