Consider! They Do Not Spin

Having looked at the first fact, that lilies do not toil, we turn to the other fact. The second fact is that the lilies of the field do not spin. Spinning is also working. Here is an example of spinning. Consider this! Spinning has to do with our own efforts, our own works to make clothes for ourselves. Spinning relates directly to people who spin and weave threads and yarns to make clothes, whether big items such as caftans and coats, or smaller items of clothing, such as socks and gloves. Spinners are very industrious and clever. Nevertheless, like human works, human spinning, or spinning, according to human effort and human minds, is all futile, as they spin or weave nothing akin to the garments of the Lord, and by the Lord.

There is an ancient adage which says that from the same source, the flower, the bee produces its honey and the spider spins its deadly web. The spinning of the spider is akin to the human, who spins according to carnal means and thereby produces nothing that offers life to others. Just as the spider, using God’s good, spins its own poisonous web, so too, many a follower of God, takes what is His and spins garments that provide nothing good in God’s sight.  

This kind of spinning is spelt out by Isaiah, when he speaks of the deplorable condition of the people of God who have despised God’s ways and weave and spin according to their own carnal means. Listen to Isaiah 59: 5 – 6. They hatch vipers’ eggs and weave the spider’s web; He who eats of their eggs dies, and from that which is crushed, a viper breaks out. Their webs will not become garments, nor will they cover themselves with their works; their works are works of iniquity. Sad, but true! Whenever we do any kind of spinning or weaving according to our own intuitions, our own desires, our own plans and our own ways, how do we expect our Heavenly Father to be pleased? How can He abide by human offerings which have not been initiated and instructed by Him? How can the hands of evil offer God its good?

Should all of us not be like these gift-offering children of Father God? Consider this! Here is Exodus 35: 21. Then everyone came whose heart was stirred, and everyone whose spirit was willing, and they brought the LORD’S offering for the work of the tabernacle of meeting, for all its service, and for the holy garments.

Consider now how this included spinners. All the women who were gifted artisans spun yarn with their hands, and brought what they had spun, of blue, purple, and scarlet, and fine linen. And all the women whose hearts stirred with wisdom spun yarn of goats’ hair. Exodus 35: 25 – 26. 

Indeed, these women were God’s people just as those in Isaiah’s time, however, the skilled works of their hands produced iniquity. The skilled works of the hands of these children were different, because they depended on God. They were people of stirred hearts, willing spirits and wise counsel.

What is the condition of our hands and hearts? Consider your role in regard to your clothing. Consider your heavenly Father’s role in regard to your clothing.