Masterpiece

Reclaiming my living space from overrun Christmas decorations is always a fun chore. Fun because I like getting the rooms back to normal. As I was storing Christmas dishes in our hutch this year, I rediscovered my sister’s gift to me several years ago: a set of six placemats. They’re handmade, quilted placemats. She is a master quilter.

I am not a quilter, but I have witnessed some of her work in the past. She uses such precision to cut the pieces of fabric into perfectly measured rectangles, squares and triangles. A pattern dictates where the quilt blocks of different colored fabric are to be placed. She irons, pins the pieces together, runs them through her amazing sewing machine, irons again, bastes, stitches, quilts. It’s a phenomenal feat, if you ask me. And she made six of them for me. Individual placemats in purples and greens and yellows and browns. They’re two-sided, too, so either way they’re placed, they grace the table with beauty.

With all the hours represented in one creation, I imagine she spends time thinking about how much she loves the person she’s creating the quilt for.

Reminds me of God’s work in my life. At the turn of the year, do you spend time looking back and looking ahead, hoping for the future to be better in ways than the past has been? I do. But today, it occurred to me the intimacy with God that has grown out of the pain of recent months has become such a precious treasure to me. Were I to do it all again, I wouldn’t wish those painful times away, not if that means missing out on God.

So, all the piecing and stitching and ironing (refining) is for good in my life as God works out His best for me.

And when He has finished His work in us (i.e. heaven) it won’t matter what direction we’re viewed from. We will be a masterpiece.