The Quilt

My sister-in-law is a skilled seamstress with extensive creative and technical skills.  She has a sophisticated, computerized machine to make fabrics and clothing of all kinds.  Recently she surprised us with a beautiful quilt, made of pieces of fabric that perfectly match all the colors in our living room in stunning patterns of different geometric shapes.  I thought about how the quilt took small pieces of many different fabrics that didn't match individually and pulled them together to make something beautiful in color and design.  Of course the original quilts in America were mostly focused on making something useful out of useless scraps of cloth in an unforgiving environment of harsh winters and meager supply.  It made me consider how the Lord has taken us all, so different and so incomplete, and stitched us together to make a heavenly quilt that is both useful and beautiful.   Mark 6:39-44(The Message Version)Jesus got them all to sit down in groups of fifty or a hundred—they looked like a patchwork quilt of wildflowers spread out on the green grass! He took the five loaves and two fish, lifted his face to heaven in prayer, blessed, broke, and gave the bread to the disciples, and the disciples in turn gave it to the people. He did the same with the fish. They all ate their fill. The disciples gathered twelve baskets of leftovers. More than five thousand were at the supper.   blessings, Rob Smith