TODAY THE WORD IS QUILTS

TODAY THE WORD is QUILTS. On a frigid, freezing temperature day as today, it is an easy reach for an appropriate topic for the blog. For a lot of my readers, you are not familiar with the word, quilt. When I was growing up, we slept under quilts and on days like today, there would have been several quilts which provided a lot of warmth. They also added a lot of weight as quilts were heavy and thick and served well for all of us living in colder houses than we have today. Most of us had heaters and central heating was not an option. Fireplaces and stove heaters were popular and some gas heaters had come into some homes. The memories of  the days of backing up to the fire or the heater and feeling toasty on the backside still make me feel comfy. However, you had your turn and by the time you got back up to the warmth, you had already gotten cold again. Sitting with a quilt around you was not an uncommon sight; we did this often during the winter months. Did any of you attend a quilting bee? I only went to one and it was more of a party than a lot of work, but quilts did get made along with many laughs, jokes, refreshments and sharing stories. When we look at a homemade quilt today, we have no idea of how much work and joy went into it. We notice the irregular stitching but we give little thought to the hours applied to those stitches. What happens now is when an elderly parent passes; the quilts are handed down to the next generation. I have some of my Mom’s quilts and so does my husband have some of his Mom’s quilts. They become family heirlooms even though most of them have little monetary value. Now for the deeper thought….quilts were usually made from scrap material. They would be accumulated until they had enough to make a pattern. Sometimes, even scraps were shared and appeared on even more quilts. That is how I see us in life as scrap material who by ourselves don’t serve a great purpose. Combined with other pieces of material (or other people) we can be stitched together to form a useful, warming, and comfortable quilt. We can comfort and furnish warm, loving actions to the one who needs something to wrap themselves in and protect them from the cold storms of life. God stitches us into the quilt and gives us the prettiest pattern if we agree to be placed into the quilt. God wants to provide a batting for us while we are used and sometimes it seems we are placed in a closet and we wonder what plans God has for us. Then, the cold, stormy, frigid times allow us to be all we need to be and we serve a great purpose, united in God’s stitches to provide loving warmth to someone else.