I joined a sewing group recently. They are getting together gifts for our team from church who are traveling to Israel this summer. So far the group has made 300 backpacks for kids, and several quilts for a nursing home. The colors are beautiful, the handiwork is wonderful too. (If you have material to donate, let me know!)
After some of the piecing, there are scraps left over...bags and boxes of remnants. A good quilter never throws away material. She reworks it into another quilt somehow.
My favorite part is putting together the colors. It appeals to my artistic side. I could see how my mom really loved to quilt. She was so good with colors, always mixing shades that make the key color really show well.
As I started to put together my first quilt, I found it interesting that as we pull remnants together for quilts, God is calling together His own remnants back to Israel.
You see, if you read in your Bible, there is talk of a remnant being called back to Israel. Here are just two of 700 scriptures...
He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth. Isaiah 11:12
"I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them and will bring them back to their pasture, where they will be fruitful and increase in number. I will place shepherds over them who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing," declares the LORD. Jeremiah 23:3-4
It is as if God is gathering up those remnants that everyone forgot about. He's painstakingly piecing them back together. Stitch by stitch, the pieces and colors go together in a pattern only He knows. And when the last knot of thread is tied, a glorious thing will be done with a nation that was once in tatters.
But now, thus says the LORD, your Creator, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel, "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! Isaiah 43:1
He can do it with your life too. Do you find your world torn in two? Do you find scraps here and there of a life that has seemed to fall apart? Give your pieces to Jesus. It is the remnant, the castoff and the forgotten that He redeems.
When that life is put back together in a new way, the pattern and colors reveal the handiwork of a Creator who does not castoff anyone who simply comes to Him. I am one of those human quilts. I was sewn back together by a loving hand. He doesn't ask us to come with new material, just bring your box of remnants and let Him do the work.
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, {he is} a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
2 Corinthians 5:17
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