Writing.....

Hey everyone, Nickie here! Boy, it's been FOREVER since I got on. Well, no more disappointment. I've got a couple more blog posts on the way starting now! :)

Just for a random profound post, I thought I would put up this analogy that I wrote out the other day.

A good friend of mine once made the comment that life is like a patchwork quilt. She explained that while the pieces of the quilt seem unrelated, scattered, and don't seem to go together, they make something beautiful when they've been put together. The more I thought about it, the more her point made sense. Her profound statement made me reconsider my own perspective. I extended her analogy; the result follows.

            The pieces of a patchwork quilt are often imperfect, frayed and worn, or perhaps faded from use somewhere else for the years before. Their colors sometimes seem uncoordinated. The scraps of fabric in a quilt are being reused, seemingly purposeless materials that are worn out and can no longer function as what they formally did.

            But the quilt-maker obviously sees a reason to use these pieces, even though they aren't perfect. He or she sees the beauty that the scraps could bring and puts them together in a new way. Sometimes, their imperfections actually lead to something more creative and beautiful when they are put into the quilt. Together, the scraps in a quilt make something lovely.

            The quilt isn't just like life; it's like people. Every person has a story that is broken and imperfect. Each person is frayed, faded, and worn out from years of living in a broken world. They are far from perfect. They see themselves as useless. But God can look at them and see beautiful things that people cannot see in themselves.

            God can take broken people and make something lovely with them. God uses everything that happens to people for a purpose, and he doesn't waste their torn-up, broken parts and hearts. Even though we as the scraps of cloth cannot see what we will become, God sees both what we are and where we are going. He is a designer who truly understands why he has allowed us to go through our difficulties. He can see that sometimes our scars or imperfections will lead to something more beautiful.

            A quilt is a picture of redemption. Useless scraps of old material are reused in a wonderfully beautiful and functional design. In a similar way God takes us and uses our lives to weave together something new and beautiful that wouldn't be the same without our imperfections. God doesn't waste old fabric scraps. He re-creates something with us that makes us bring even more beauty and light to a dark world.