Later today, I will be travelling into London to a fashion show. Not that I’m up with the latest trends and designs. Anyone who knows me will be well aware of that! However, it has become an annual event that soon after Twelfth Night, I attend a certain designer’s show by special invitation.
For that last few years, a men’s designer has contacted me a couple of months before Christmas with his idea for a knitwear design. He uses historical sources to imagine a garment to be constructed using natural fibres, then runs it past me for advice on particular stitches and whether or not it would be feasible. If we decide it is, he sends the yarn and I have a few weeks to make the sample and send it to him.
If it goes according to plan and he is happy with the result, the invitation is sent out and I get to see my creation momentarily on the body of a model. It’s usually in an atmospheric historical setting, in candlelight, so I’m generally squinting at each model to see if they are the model wearing ‘my’ make. Usually, it’s late in the programme and by then I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s been omitted, so when I do see it, I emit a little squeal of delight and relief.
When I was in year 4 at school, I knitted something for a boy I was sweet on. With pride and embarrassment, I presented it to him. Later that morning, when I looked across to where he was sitting, imagine my horror as I saw strands of my hard work dropping silently on the floor under his desk. Surrounded with his mates, scissors in hand, he laughed as he cut it into pieces.
I wondered how God feels and reacts at the way we treat His creation. Not just the earth and nature, but also each other and ourselves. Do we treasure and nurture it? Do we shred it and abuse it?