Patches!

Well, where are we at? It is New Year’s Day 2007 and it seems that we have dropped off the radar for awhile but in reality what has really happened is “life”. What do I mean by that? Just that some of the normal things that happen in the natural course of living are not so wanted but they always make the twists and turns in our lives interesting to say the least and yes, whether we liked it or not we have certainly had our share of some biggies lately.

Everything was sailing along as usual, me in the publications office and my industrious wife busy with needle and thread lovingly sewing up a rather large quilt for our daughter’s bed. Before you could say “hang on” I was on a flight from Papua New Guinea back to my father’s funeral. Along with that there was my mother to help care for; visiting of old friends, Christmas, New Year and nursing mum back to health after her double pneumonia and all this before we could consider what our next move was to be.

Strangely enough after all that it is that quilt that brought a few things to my attention.

It wasn’t just any old quilt, it was one composed of many small squares of different colours, each one having a different picture, motif or theme. You see it was to be a patchwork of life’s little happenings and she had selected specific colours and designs in line with the various events in our daughter’s life from when she was young through to her marriage etc, their time in Africa and so on. Another feature was that it started with one corner having very dark cloth then as each square was added it became paler until it reached the final square in the opposite corner which was white.

Well this really caught my attention because you see this is something like many people’s path through life. All start with the dark square and this I liken to the fact that we are all born in the linage of Adam which is biased to the rejection of God’s control in our lives, the Bible calls this rejection sinfulness. If all people’s lives were a quilt some would be dark from corner to corner, others’ would have that graduation from dark to light but the reason for this graduation seems at first to be hidden. However, as with my daughter’s quilt, on closer inspection you discover hidden in the fabric is a ‘red’ square and it is from this point on that the shades start to become paler. It is the red that makes all the difference. That one red square represents blood, not just any blood but that of God in the form of Jesus of Nazareth, His Son. His blood was drained on a cruel cross as payment for crime, for the cross was an instrument of death for a criminal. Do not be mistaken, this payment could not have been for himself as He was sinless, rather it was for any and all who accept that payment (His blood loss) in their stead, in which case the debt of Adam is paid and the one that claims it is accepted by the perfect God.

If your life was a quilt, what colour would it be?

Until next time ................