Psalm 147:5: Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.

I don’t know if you know what a string figure is or a hard knot. I learned how to do string figures from my mom, who was pretty much in favor of inexpensive and indestructible things for my brother and me to play with. String is long-lasting at least, although I found ways to destroy it, as I did with many things that were more expensive.

I would be trying to make “Jacob’s Ladder” (my favorite) and have a hopeless tangle of string after about the third step. I would take it to my mom, who could untangle the mess and hand it back to me, knowing I could be back in half an hour with a worse tangle. She was very patient about this (she told me she enjoyed taking knots out of things), and she got to be very good at untangling knotted strings, even the dreaded “hard knot.” I heard about hard knots so often that you would think I would know what one was. But I didn’t . I had to look it up, and found out that a hard knot is one that can’t be undone with one hand.

Oh. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t get my hard knots undone and had to take them to my mom. Mystery explained.

It seems to me that God gives us our lives, and while matters should be as pure and simple as a length of new string, we try to make complicated figures with what we have been given and end up with a knotted, tangled mess. By ourselves, we cannot fix this situation. We find, however, if we call on God, God will take what we have done and untangle it, hard knots and all. We are able to do this only through the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has undone the hard knots of sin and death.

Praise be to God for fresh new string and for God’s power which untangles it when we have it all in a snarl. Amen.