so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
May dwell is not a guarantee. Paul knows God’s will is paramount. This gospel only lights the path, we still have to walk in it by faith.
1 John 5:4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
Psalm 139:13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
Life is often metaphorically compared to a tapestry or thread that can fray or unravel. A common (sometimes attributed to Corrie ten Boom) reflection is that from the “back side” of life’s tapestry, things look like a messy tangle of threads—only later revealing a beautiful pattern when viewed from the other side.
Proverbs 30:5 Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.
I alluded to a thread running through the scriptures that serve God’s will for our lives. The idea that we can pull at a thread and make our sweater unravel is not unlike the metaphor of the tapestry. Our lives are a tangled mess and pulling at what we do not understand to discover where it will lead us just unravels that pattern we do not see on “the other side”. God sees us in His finished work.
His Word can help us see things from God’s point of view if we will just trust in Him.