Kylie

Just as crochet requires focus, patience, and creativity, our lives are carefully shaped in the hands of God.

For our 2024 Christmas toy drive, I decided that instead of buying toys, I would crochet them. I’ve knitted plenty of scarves and potholders in the past, but I never bothered to properly learn crochet until recently. Compared to the mindless repeating pattern of a scarf, the patterns for making a 3D penguin or frog require much more careful counting. I can’t as easily crochet one while watching a show or movie. Still, the joy of a cute little animal made of yarn, just in its existence, makes it all worth it.

Unlike knitting, crochet cannot be done by machine. Though the aesthetic can be approximated, the real thing requires human hands. I could say the same about creative arts in general. In the past few years, image-generation neural networks have advanced to the point of making false pictures that look almost entirely real, and a new type of “AI artist” has learned to leverage this technology to generate almost any image they want. They hone the wording of their prompts, perhaps with rounds of refinement to adjust certain aspects of the image. Usually, such “art” ends up one of two ways: either it has bizarre flaws such as too many fingers on one hand and too few on the other—or it is so perfect, shiny, and idealized that it gives a creepy, uncanny-valley effect. On the surface, it looks very similar to art; on a deeper level, its generation came from a machine that simply does not understand how hands are supposed to work.

Artists who don’t outsource to machine learning algorithms argue that human-made art is set apart by the intention put into it. Someone who has studied light and shadow can choose where to set the light source for a painting. Then they add in the shadows and highlights, perhaps also the scattering or bounce lights, accordingly. A crochet pattern made by a person can easily count that doubling every stitch in a row of 6 stitches will lead to 12 stitches in the next row. They might also intentionally shift the spacing of increases in the next rows to help maintain even roundness. It might take a long time to make something. Or if it’s quick, years of practice have carved the muscle memory that looks effortless. There’s thoughtfulness, passion, even love. It’s harder to feel unlovable when someone gifts you a little toy animal in which every choice, every stitch, was made with care.

This love within human creativity, like all love, reflects our Creator. He spoke the world into existence starting from “Let there be light.” He called it “good” and humans “very good.” Psalm 139:13–14 says—

“For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. 
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. 
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.” 

I recently had a talk with a friend who reminded me that God is Creator, and His creation is beautiful. It follows that if we are His creation, we are also beautiful. In truth, I still struggle to believe I am “fearfully and wonderfully made.” So often I feel broken, either internally or by outside circumstances, and I cry out to God to ask why. What was the intention behind the trauma, the stress, the heartbreak? If I am a work in progress, still being made “perfect and complete” by “trials of various kinds” (James 1:2–4), is that work truly being done with care and love?

It must be. If I love “because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19) and that love drove me to crochet a stuffed rabbit wearing a little dress to gift to a child I have never met—what if love drives God to make me, continuously, to love others in need? Or even to generate joy via my simple existence? It still boggles my mind that I mean something to the Creator of the universe, imperfect as I am, and yet the prophet Zephaniah has said—

“he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.”