Page 37 of Unveiled Tamar’s Story (Mysteries & Wonders of the Bible #1)

W hen they arrived, they discovered that the Eleven had moved to another room somewhere, leaving the larger group of believers in the upper room.

Tamar wished the Eleven were there to offer their guidance but wondered if perhaps this was part of God’s plan, allowing Valerius and Mariana to slip into the gathering virtually unnoticed, unchallenged.

Bithnia welcomed them warmly and made no objection when they found a corner where they could pray, out of sight of most of the assembly.

“The Eleven are still convinced that there is danger,” Bithnia whispered to them, settling on the floor between Tamar and Mariana, “and that they are the most likely targets, so it is safer for the rest of us if they are not among us. I think they mean to travel back to Galilee soon, as the Lord instructed them to do. Who is to say if perhaps that is to keep them safe?” She shrugged, somehow looking both tired and radiant.

“We are praying for them. And for Imma Mary and a few of the other women who went with them.”

“Galilee.” Tamar had never traveled more than a few miles from Jerusalem, but she’d heard plenty of sneering comments over the years about the various regions. “Nothing good can come out of Nazareth” was a prime example.

Yet the Lord had lived there for years. He had been born, so Bithnia had informed her, in the hamlet of Bethlehem, then grown up in another small, inconsequential town.

Not in Jerusalem, not in Athens, not in Rome.

The King of all Ages had chosen obscurity.

How strange a choice. Even stranger, He’d chosen as His disciples men at home in fishing boats and sheepfolds, not scribes and men of law.

The whole order of things, turned on its head.

No wonder it left them reeling. Yet it was a delicious sort of dizziness.

It reminded her of a time when she was a child, when the family had gone out of the city for an afternoon.

She’d stood up too fast, her head had gone light, and rather than sit back down, she’d run.

Arms out, laughter spilling from her lips, feet flying over the wildflower-dotted meadow.

She’d felt, for the seconds the lightheadedness had lasted, like a bird.

Like her feet didn’t touch the ground for those moments. As if she was soaring with the angels.

The same sort of feeling possessed her now.

Nothing looked quite like it used to, and her head was still spinning from all the rapid changes to both the cosmos and her own heart.

But it was a good sort of spin. Freeing.

Flying. She waited with bated breath to see where the Lord would guide her as she ran, arms outstretched.

Her gaze swept over the assembly. More were gathered here than yesterday, even with the core disciples having separated themselves. She sensed in all of them that same expectancy. No one knew exactly what they were waiting for, but they were ready to receive it.

“We will gather here every day,” Bithnia whispered. “We will pray. All hours, as long as it takes. Days, weeks, months…until Jesus gives us instructions, we will pray.”

Tamar nodded. “I am glad I have no further duties to pull me away. I can be here, praying and praising.” The weaving room would continue its work without her.

Bithnia offered her a knowing smile and nodded toward her lap. Tamar wasn’t certain why until she spoke. “Your fingers twitch at the mere thought of your looms. I imagine your ears strain for the familiar sounds of the shuttle. You will miss it.”

Tamar granted that with a tilt of her head.

“I will, yes.” The work, and the women who made up so much of her world.

She drew in a long breath and leaned back against the wall.

“That work gave me purpose. I imagine when I close my eyes, I will always see the colors that brought scenes to life, that created art from strands of wool.”

Bithnia reached for her hand. “My first day there, you said, ‘We were made in the image of the Creator, and so we are creative. When we create, when we make something from these pieces He created first—wool and wood and dye from plants—we honor Him. We praise Him with our hands. We bring Him glory as we imitate His creative work.’”

Tamar smiled. “Lessons first imparted to me by my grandmother.

When I was just a tiny girl, she drew me her into her lap, positioned my fingers on the loom, and taught me how individual strands must come together to create something new.

‘One thread,’ she said, ‘is nothing on its own. We are nothing on our own. That is why God put us in families, why those families meet others to form tribes, why our tribes need one another to be a nation.”

Bithnia and Mariana both smiled with her. Mariana murmured, “A beautiful lesson.”

But that was only the start of it. “She reminded me that cloth is one of the most basic things, something everyone needs. But she taught me that it is even more important for the reminder it provides. She told me that I was but one thread. She was another. My parents, brothers, sisters, cousins…each just one strand. But together…together we are something more than twelve threads in a tangle. Together we are a tapestry.”

She could all but hear her grandmother’s sweet voice in her ear, all but feel her knowledgeable hands steadying Tamar’s uncertain ones. All but see the threads of her life and family, stretched out before her on life’s loom.

Bithnia’s gaze went distant, her nod slow.

It looked as though she was digesting the words, making them a part of her.

“That is a perfect analogy. For so long, my own family had been only the expected colors, running in straight lines. Yes, there were always the surprises of deaths and births, of business that didn’t go according to plan, of arguments between siblings and cousins who had once been the closest friends.

But those were the expected pattern, as random as each moment might seem.

That was what every life looked like—long stretches of a single color, broken here and there by another.

When just traveling in a straight line, I cannot always see the pattern. ”

Mariana took Bithnia’s other hand and squeezed it. “But step back, take a broader view, look beyond our own thread, and the beauty of the design emerges. I met the two of you. You brought us here. To this .”

Tamar let her gaze wander around the gathering.

“I wonder if it is even more than that. I think the very fabric has shifted. God rent the veil in two. I think all of history must note this as a turning point—that future generations will mark the time before Jesus came and then after. Because this is not the same tapestry any longer. We are part of a new picture. A new tapestry.”

Mariana’s nod was decisive. “One in which death does not mean the end of life.”

Bithnia smiled. “One in which ordinary fishermen are called to be fishers of men. Where the first become last and the last become first. Where the greatest Man ever to walk the earth came as a servant.”

A new tapestry. A new fabric. But some of the same principles would apply too.

They were still individual threads, every person in this room.

It was just that God was weaving them into His veil in new and unexpected ways.

Dyeing raw wool with royal purple. Refining bulky thread into the finest web.

Then using them to weave a picture never seen before.

As she looked out over the gathering, she wondered how many tribes were represented in this room.

How many regions. How many sects. In some of the faces, she saw evidence of other peoples.

Egyptian features, Greek ones, Persian. Because the Jews had already been dispersed among the nations before, and when they returned to the land promised to them, they never returned alone.

They brought with them those who had seen the power of God through their witness.

God raised children of Abraham from the scattered sands.

God had chosen to let His Son be killed, to rip the veil in two, at the very hour when the Passover lambs were being sacrificed for them . Not for the Jews of Jerusalem—but for the scattered children who had come home to Him.

Her gaze drifted to Mariana and then past her to Valerius.

He was bowed in prayer beside her brother and cousin, lips moving in murmurs too quiet for her to hear, but his sincerity was as obvious as the sun.

Tamar smiled. “You and your husband are new and unexpected threads, Mariana, but chosen by God. Colored by His masterful touch. And now you must be woven into the greater cloth.”

Mariana blinked back tears, smiled, nodded. Then she bowed her head, clearly so overwhelmed that there was no recourse but prayer.

God had put their threads together, for reasons Tamar couldn’t know yet.

She could see how these two had helped her, of course, and she could hope that perhaps this was how she could help them in turn, by guiding their threads into the fabric of followers.

Standing beside them. Claiming a new sister and brother in these two Romans—and perhaps mourning the ones who would not accept either them or her, now that she’d declared herself a follower of Jesus.

“Our home will not be associated with that heretic.” Moshe had bit out the words when she’d spotted Valerius and Mariana, when she’d explained as succinctly as she could that they had saved her life and that they were disciples of the Messiah as she now was.

“If you insist upon this path, then you are no longer part of our family.”

He’d looked at her, at Simon. No room for discussion in his gaze.

Neither she nor her brother had wavered, and it wasn’t just because Levi had said they were welcome in his home. It was because turning away from the risen Lord was inconceivable. Once one had been filled with that light, the thought of the sticky darkness couldn’t be borne.

Perhaps he would relent. Perhaps he would experience the glory of the Lord for himself—he and his whole household. She prayed so, prayed that her brothers and their wives, their children, could know this joy.

But even if they didn’t, she would rejoice. She would never stop praying, but she also wouldn’t miss out on what new things God gave her.

Her fingers knotted in the fabric of the tunic she’d borrowed again from Hannah. She’d woven this cloth herself. Had dyed it until it was the perfect shade to complement her cousin’s smile. It was the thing she was best at in life. The skill she had honed, the talent she had tended.

It would be useful, here as it was anywhere. Because cloth, as her grandmother had said, was one of the most basic things of life. Everyone needed it. Everyone wore it.

Her fingers remembered the feel of the silk too—an offering of friendship from Claudia to Mariana. An offer of help from Mariana to Tamar. She’d scrubbed it clean last night and had it dried and folded and ready to return.

But just giving back a borrowed garment wasn’t enough. It was nothing but a thank-you. Nothing but an even return.

She wanted to add something to it.

So she studied her new friend. Noted the shade of her smile, the green-gold of her eyes, the pink of her cheeks.

She planned what dyes she would use on the dried and processed flax she had stored in Moshe’s house, ready to be spun into linen.

She planned how fine she would make the thread.

She designed the pattern she would create as she wove it into fabric.

Linen would never be as expensive as silk. But she would give her the work of her hands—the work of her heart.

She would welcome Mariana and her family into the tapestry of her life. Together, they would walk the newly created path from earth to heaven.