[It will be of interest if the speaker can show a shuttle with a thread attached to it.]
Once there was a great loom, that was weaving a beautiful silk cloth, of many colors. Silk threads were stretched out in a long row, and that was called the warp. Then there were shuttles,—little spools of thread of different colors,—that were shot through, between these threads, from right to left, from left to right, making the woof, which bound the whole together into a firm cloth.
Now there was one little shuttle that carried purple thread. The shuttle was very little, and purple was not much used in the design of the cloth, so at last the shuttle made up his mind that he was not of much use, anyway, and he might as well not do anything. The next time, then, that the weaver told this purple shuttle to shoot through among the threads of the warp, he refused to budge, and so he acted all through the making of that piece of cloth. At last, when they came to take it from the loom, they found that the silk was ugly and ruined because of the gaps in it, just where the little purple shuttle should have gone through.
O boys, girls, you are not very large, nor very wise, nor very strong, but God has a work for all the shuttles in the loom of life. If any one of them, no matter how little, fails to do his part, it hurts, just that much, the whole piece. But if all shuttles work together, and move just as the Weaver tells them to, then a cloth is made that is beautiful enough for the angels to wear!