When I was a young teenager, my mother taught me how to sew. She had made almost all of her own clothes as a teenager, and saw this skill as an essential part of womanhood.

I thought otherwise. As a clumsy, impatient 13-year-old who preferred climbing trees and playing football with the boys, I was endlessly frustrated with the fiddly, slow, detail-oriented nature of sewing. Crooked seams, parts of the garment sewn together that weren't supposed to be, and wild thread tangles drove me to the point of tears many times.

To add to the pain, the garments I had to sew were my absolute nemesis: dresses. My qualification for clothes was simple: could you climb a tree in them? Dresses failed this test, therefore to me were completely useless.

The one aspect of sewing that provided some enjoyment was the design. I liked visiting the fabric store to pick out a pattern and pretty cloth to go with it. But the making part involved hours of pain, with my only consolation the compliments I sometimes received on my homemade creations.

My poor mother, after seeing me through to what she considered an adequate level of skill as a seamstress, finally allowed me to give it up. I never returned to making garments, though in the years since I've been thankful for the skills that allow me to sew on buttons, hem trousers, and fix holey seams.

Shortly after I quit sewing, my mother upgraded from her antique Singer machine to a slicker, newer plastic model, and the Singer was relegated to a closet. For years after I left home my mother offered it to me, but I was ambivalent. Finally I decided I would take it, but it was another year or more before, on one trip home, my mother got my father to carry the machine out to my borrowed car and put it in the trunk.

After that, it sat for several months in a corner of the dining room. This past week, the purchase of trousers some 5 inches too long compelled me to drag it out. To tell the truth, the whole process of threading it, filling a bobbin, and setting it up rather frightened me. I contemplated some lazier options, like taking the trousers to a tailor, but lack of funds prevailed.

The case was more battered than I remembered, and the heavy metal machine inside more antique-looking and covered in dust. Two ancient cardboard boxes held a scary-looking buttonholer and an assortment of bobbins and other mysterious metal parts. The instruction booklet, along with the various pages that had separated from it, were also inside, but I was surprised at how naturally the once-automatic process of winding the thread around the various bits of machinery to the needle came back to me. When I inserted the electrical cord and plugged it in, the little light popped on, just like it always had.

I put my prepared trouser legs under the needle, lowered the foot, and gingerly pressed the foot pedal. The familiar clackety-clack ensued, and a neat hem spilled out. A few moments later, I had hemmed trousers, with a surprising minimum of pain and suffering.

I put the machine back in its case with no small sense of satisfaction. Sewing, my once-nemesis, and the machine I'd loathed, were now my servants and my friends. Thanks, Mom. I'm sorry for all the agony I put you through while learning, but I'm grateful you persisted. I may never make a dress again, but at least I can sew a hem.

When I arrive at the subway station, the bus at the platform is the one I don’t want, so I sit down on a bench to knit and wait.

A shuffling of feet approaches me: chk, chk. An old couple, chattering away in precise, guttural Cantonese, their voices cracked yet rich with age like a fine glaze. They’re both dressed to the nines: the gentleman in a long shapeless wool trench coat belted around his expanding girth, over a suit and tie, and a spectacular fur hat that makes him look like a Russian tsar. The lady is wearing a sparkly black cloche hat, a long black fur coat with a tan fur cape over her shoulders, and a zebra print handbag. She sits down next to me while he stands, slightly bent over, hands clasped behind his back, continuing their conversation. Out of the corner of my eye I see her watching my knitting; a drop in the volume of their conversation indicates to me that they may be discussing it.

A little boy and his father walk past to stand at the doors to the bus platform. The little boy dances and repeatedly chants, “And I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down,” apparently inspired by the wind tunnel that this subway station becomes when the trains rush in. After waiting a bit they walk back to stand near us. The little boy cavorts and the attention of the elderly Cantonese gentleman is caught. His glasses-adorned face breaks into the thousand creases of a delighted smile as he watches. He pats the boy on the back and begins an interaction. The boy’s father stands impassively staring out to the bus platform, ignoring his son’s new friend.

The little boy offers the old man a subway transfer, then snatches it away as the gentleman reaches for it. He offers it again; the elderly man holds his hand up, palm out, chuckling, in refusal. The boy offers until the gentleman takes it and then fishes in his pocket for his own transfer and hands them both to the boy. The little boy steps up his performance. He tells the old man to listen, and makes noises with his mouth that might be attempts at whistling. The delighted old man apes the noises. The little boy demands that his new friend repeat some words, including “ticket”, as he holds out his transfer to illustrate. The gentleman cannot speak or understand English, apart from “Good!” “Oh” and “Thank you”, so he just laughs.

The little boy commands “Look!” and jumps and whirls for the man’s attention. The Cantonese gentleman makes a great show of approval, laughing and clapping and crying “Good!” He glances around at the people nearby, wishing to share his happiness in his new friend.

Finally the bus comes and the little boy, his father, and the Cantonese man and his wife all move off toward the platform. The man and boy are faster than the shuffling old couple; but the little boy has a thought. He stops, rushes back full tilt, and throws his arms around the capacious belted waist of the old Chinese gentleman. The old man bends down to put his arms around the boy, and they embrace for a tender moment. Having completed his goodbyes, the little boy follows his father on to board the bus.

This is a blog post that’s been brewing in my head for some time, and a few recent events brought the thoughts to the surface again. It’s not incredibly well-thought out, nor is it based on hours of biblical study, but I’d be interested in your opinions.

As human beings, we have a deep desire, or perhaps even need, for things to make sense. We would like the universe, and our lives, to proceed in a well-ordered, reasonable, sensible fashion. We would like the laws of cause and effect to behave in the way we’d expect them to: i.e., put this amount of effort/good behaviour in, get this favourable result; do this bad thing or fail to put in this effort, get this unpleasant result.

We’d like our relationship with God to proceed in the same way. Do the right things, life will go well. Put in x amount of prayer and Bible study, grow x amount in our intimacy with God and holiness. Live according to the “rules”, and reap prosperity/good relationships/nice jobs/well-behaved children/smooth sailing/immunity from problems.

Most of us would not put these feelings into words, but it’s a deep-seated part of who we are nonetheless. It appeals to our innate sense of justice. It’s why we’re so jarred when things don’t seem to “make sense”: good, righteous people suffer terribly; you hear a calling from God that does not come to pass though years go by; you receive a clear prophecy which comes to pass and then the results of it don’t seem good; evil, unscrupulous people enjoy happy, prosperous, relatively easy and pain-free lives. And on and on.

It’s an ancient conundrum, expressed in book form in Job, as well as in many of the Psalms. It’s a conundrum I’ve puzzled over again and again, as crushing disappointments roll in on a regular basis and the things I’ve thought would come to pass in my life don’t seem to.

The thing is, the Old Covenant seems to have worked that way. God gave Israel the law, and then promised blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. The blessings included agricultural prosperity, children, defeat of Israel’s enemies, establishment in the land, and physical health and wealth. The curses were the opposite. (See Deuteronomy 28).

When you come to the New Covenant, rather than these promises being amped up, they disappear. Jesus promised trouble and suffering. He said his followers would be hated as he was hated. Greater godliness and calling seems to lead to greater suffering, as exemplified by the apostles. On a smaller scale, godliness and devotion to Jesus in our personal lives doesn’t guarantee exemption from suffering and poverty, or even life making any kind of sense at all. Most of us can testify to that from our own experience.

The longer I live and the more of life’s pain I experience, the more convinced I am that God really isn’t interested in our lives “making sense”, or even in us understanding what is going on. I believe what he’s interested in is the faith that will pursue him and worship him in spite of pain, that faces life’s idiosyncrasies and outright injustices and says, “You are my only hope.” God doesn’t want a fair-weather faith or fair-weather followers who tread on his heels for the material goodies he hands out, like the crowd did to Jesus after he multiplied the bread (John 6). Rather, he wants those who will stick with him when he tells us hard things like “Eat my flesh” and promises us suffering. He wants those who love him, not his ability to make our lives easier.

I don’t think we’re guaranteed, or indeed even likely, to be able to figure out the vagaries of life and our circumstances. Rather, I think we are called to allow them to be goads to drive us to pursue God, a deeper knowledge of him, greater intimacy with him, better understanding of his will for us, and a stronger commitment to follow him, no matter what. After all, it’s his love for us that can and will triumph over even the most horrible of circumstances (Romans 8:28-39), and it’s a reality that we can experience no matter what we are going through.