African-American preacher, theologian and mystic Howard Thurman (1900-1981) wrote a wonderful poem called “The Threads in My Hand.” It begins this way:
“Only one end of the threads, I hold in my hand. The threads go many ways, linking my life with other lives.”
He goes on to describe how one thread is connected to the life of one who is sick, a thread needing to be held tenderly. Another thread comes from the hands of an old, old friend who, quite unintentionally, we have lost touch with and so that thread has slackened and fallen limp. A third thread is a tangled mess that won’t come right. It represents times of angry words, false starts and past mistakes–all disappointing events, but still things we hold onto; and so that thread is in our grasp as well.
Lent is the season for examining the threads we hold in our hands. It is a time to ponder the ties that bind us to one another. Some threads extend forth to family, young and old, or to friends, near and far. Some connect us to people who depend on us for support; others link us to people to whom we rely on in times of need. And some are a “tangled mess,” complicated and knotty, full of memories of regret, disappointment, and dark nights of the soul.
Thurman named a fourth thread, one that comes from a “high-flying kite [that] quivers with the mighty current of fierce and holy dreaming, invading the common day with far-off places and visions bright.” This is the thread linked to the best in the human spirit. It is that part of us that dreams dreams and dares to work for a better tomorrow, knowing that “hope is the thing with feathers” (Emily Dickinson).
But this aspirational thread is not enough. One more is needed, which Thurman describes in the poem’s final paragraph:
One thread is a strange thread–it is my steadying thread; When I am lost, I pull it hard and find my way. When I am saddened, I tighten my grip and gladness glides along its quivering path; When the waste places of my spirit appear in arid confusion, the thread becomes a channel of newness of life. One thread is a strange thread–it is my steadying thread. God’s hand holds the other end.
The line from Lent to Easter is like God’s steadying thread of faith. Though one of the many threads we clutch in our hands, it is the one that leads us home when we are lost, lifts our spirits when we are sad, and brings us resurrection life when we encounter the shadow of death. This thread may seem fragile and strange at times, which it is, but its value comes solely from who holds the other end–the One who is with us always, who has promised to never let go. In that is our hope and our comfort and our Easter joy. Thanks be to God!