I Only Ever Follow The Pattern

You have never changed a thing.

Not once. Not the colors, not the size, not the little variation the instructions suggest at the end for people who want to make it their own. You do it as written, from the top, and when it says do a thing you do that thing.

And you are good at it. That should be said, because nobody ever says it. Following a complicated set of instructions accurately, all the way through, without losing your place, is a genuine ability that a great many people do not have.

But you have filed yourself under copier.

Not a maker. A follower. Somebody who assembles what a real maker designed, the way a person puts together flat pack furniture and does not claim to have made a bookcase.

I want to look at that word, because I think you have used it against yourself for years without ever holding it up to the light.

Here is what actually happens when you follow a pattern.

Somebody wrote a set of instructions. Those instructions do not contain a made thing. They contain a description of a made thing, and the description is not the object, and it never becomes the object until a specific pair of hands works it.

And your version does not come out like anybody else's. Two people follow the same pattern with the same materials and the results are different, always, and anybody who has sat at a table with other people making the same thing knows this and cannot explain it.

That difference is you. It is not a fault in your following. It is the part the instructions could not carry.

After their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount

There is an instruction God gives Moses about the making of the tabernacle, and it is repeated several times, and it is not what people expect.

And look that thou make them after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount. (Exodus 25:40, King James Version)

Make them after their pattern.

The most sacred making project in the Old Testament was done to a specification. Moses did not design it. He was shown a pattern, and the instruction was to follow it, exactly, and the exactness was the point rather than a limitation on it.

You are doing the very thing God required of the most careful making in Scripture, and Exodus 25:40 puts following at the center of it rather than at the edge. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a tabernacle instruction and lays it down on a kitchen table with a printed pattern held under a mug.

And notice who did the work. Bezalel and the craftsmen, filled with the Spirit of God, working to somebody else's pattern. Nobody in that account is described as less of a maker for it.

You have a place in that account rather than outside it, and it is already settled in the written word that the ones who worked to a pattern were the ones filled for the work. His Spirit is the one who says that over a woman who has been calling herself an assembler.

Following is not the opposite of making

Now let me press on the word copier, because it is doing quiet damage and it is not accurate.

A copier reproduces something that already exists. A photocopier makes another one of a thing.

That is not what happens at your table. Before the work begins, the object does not exist. There is a description on paper. Afterward there is an object in the world, and it came into existence through your hands and nowhere else.

You are the one who brings it into existence, and Exodus 25:40 puts following a pattern at the center of the holiest making in Scripture. The Holy Spirit is the one who refuses to rank a designer above a pair of hands.

That is not copying. That is making, working from a plan, which is how most of the made world came to be. The cathedral had drawings. The chair had a template. The dress had a pattern, and the woman who cut it was not an assembler.

And this: whether you designed it is not a measure of you. Nothing in the sight of God attaches to whether a maker also drew the plan.

You are not an assembler, and heaven has never once ranked the designer above the one who worked it. Exodus 25:40 puts the pattern above and the craftsmen below and calls both of them holy work, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses a ranking Scripture does not make.

And I am not going to tell you to start improvising. Do not change a color tonight to prove something. That accepts the accusation and tries to answer it.

You have permission to follow it exactly and call that making, and this is yours: the exactness was the requirement rather than the compromise. It is written in Exodus 25:40 to make them after their pattern, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a commendation rather than a limit.

Twenty minutes, follow it exactly

So here is the ask, and it will be easy in the doing and hard in the naming.

Tonight, follow a pattern for twenty minutes. Exactly. Change nothing at all.

Same colors as written. Same size. Do not take up the little variation at the end that invites you to make it your own. Follow it the way you always do.

You are doing exactly what God required of the most careful making in Scripture, and Exodus 25:40 makes the exactness the requirement rather than the compromise. The Holy Spirit is the one who calls a followed pattern holy work.

And here is the second half, which is the actual exercise. When you put it down, call it making.

Out loud if you can. In your head if not. Say that you made something tonight, without the qualifier, without saying it was only a pattern, without adding that you did not design it.

It will come out imperfect, because your hands are your hands and no follower reproduces anything exactly. Leave the imperfections in. Do not go back and fix the bit that drifted from the instructions.

You are covered while you follow it and call it making, and Exodus 25:40 is the ground under that. The written word puts the following at the center of the holiest making project in the Old Testament, and the Spirit of God is present at a kitchen table with a printed sheet and a mug on the corner of it.