Strong Enough?

Devotion for the week...

Have you ever watched an adult arm wrestle a preschooler? When the adult inevitably loses, it's obvious to everyone except the preschooler that the adult lost on purpose. The preschooler, though, thinks they were strong enough to overpower the adult and gets so excited about their win! This past week, as we approached Easter, that image was all I could see when I thought about Jesus going to the cross.

Jesus wasn't surprised by the cross. He wasn't ambushed and dragged there unwillingly. He wasn't fighting to get free or resisting in any way. His death on that cross was planned ahead of time and He was simply following the plan. He even told Pilate, "You would have no power over me at all unless it were given to you from above" (John 19:11).

Satan, though, didn't know about the plan. He didn't understand the power of God, so he thought he was overpowering Jesus. Can you imagine how excited he was when Jesus died on the cross? How he must have celebrated God's defeat? He actually thought he had outmaneuvered the omniscient God! 

But then came the moment of truth. As Peter explained in his sermon to the crowd on the day of Pentecost, "God released [Jesus] from the horrors of death and raised him back to life, for death could not keep him in its grip" (Acts 2: 24). Death wasn't strong enough to hold Jesus! 

Satan thought he had defeated Jesus on that cross, but in reality, Jesus had let him win. Then, while Satan was likely still celebrating, God revealed His true strength as He raised Jesus back to life, claiming the ultimate victory.

Pinwheel Irish Chain Pattern Release

Today's pattern release has been a long time coming! I'm excited to say that the Pinwheel Irish Chain pattern is now (finally!) in my shop.

I made my first Pinwheel Irish Chain quilt in 2019 as an Island Batik ambassador challenge. I made the top and donated it to Victoria's Quilts Canada, a group that makes comfort quilt for people receiving cancer treatments, and who only accept quilt tops rather than finished quilts.

Every few months since then, I receive an email asking where to buy the Pinwheel Irish Chain pattern, but there wasn't one. There also wasn't a finished quilt for me to put on the cover of a pattern. I put it on my mental to-do list, but with no deadline it just kept getting pushed further and further down the list.

Then I realized it would be a perfect Stash Artists pattern. That meant it had a deadline, so I made another quilt (finished this time), wrote the pattern, and released it to Stash Artists members last March. Now, a year later, it's available to quilters outside the membership. (By the way, if you love scrappy and stash-friendly patterns like this, Stash Artists doors will be opening for new members next month. You can get on the waitlist here to be notified when doors open.)

This quilt is like a collection of my favourite things - blues, pinwheels, an Irish Chain, and it's scrappy! I made the throw size for the cover quilt, and the pattern also includes instructions for baby and queen sizes.

What colour scraps would you use for the Irish Chain in your Pinwheel Irish Chain quilt? While the blues will always have my heart, I keep thinking it would look great in Christmas reds and greens, too. Whatever colour you'd choose, you can get the pattern now in my Etsy shop!

Judas

Devotion for the week...

I was looking for a different post when I stumbled across this series I wrote leading up to Easter 2019. As we approach Easter again this year, it seems like a good time to share it again. Here's the last of the series, with links to the previous two.

_______________________________________________

Over the past two weeks, we've looked at Pilate and the chief priests and their parts in the Easter story. Today I want to look at Judas' betrayal of Jesus.

"Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve disciples, went to the leading priests and asked, 'How much will you pay me to betray Jesus to you?' And they gave him thirty pieces of silver. From that time on, Judas began looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus." (Matthew 26:14-16).

The Bible doesn't tell us anything about why Judas betrayed Him, though people have speculated that Judas was looking for a king who would overthrow the Romans, who had conquered Israel. When it became apparent that Jesus wasn't going to do that, Judas betrayed him. Whatever his reason, I think it's interesting to note that it was Judas who approached the chief priests, not them coming to ask him to betray Jesus. Judas took the initiative to get rid of Jesus and even to make a profit from doing it.

When the time came, Judas brought "a crowd of men armed with swords and clubs...sent by the leading priests and elders of the people" (v. 47) to arrest Jesus in Gethsemane and "had given them a prearranged signal: 'You will know which one to arrest when I greet him with a kiss.' So Judas came straight to Jesus. 'Greetings, Rabbi!' he exclaimed and gave him the kiss." (vv. 48-49).

The next morning, "When Judas, who had betrayed him, realized that Jesus had been condemned to die, he was filled with remorse. So he took the thirty pieces of silver back to the leading priests and the elders. 'I have sinned,' he declared, 'for I have betrayed an innocent man'....Then Judas threw the silver coins down in the Temple and went out and hanged himself" (Matthew 27:3-5).

What I can't help but wonder is what did he think was going to happen? He hanged himself upon realizing that Jesus was going to die, so obviously that wasn't his intention, but what did he intend? Was he aiming to have Jesus discredited, so people would stop following Him? Did he hope Jesus would be arrested and put in prison? Did he never really think about what would happen to Jesus, instead only focusing on what he stood to gain by turning Jesus in to the chief priests? We don't know what he expected to have happen, but when he realized that Jesus was going to die, he was so crushed by his guilt that he committed suicide.

I remember once hearing someone lament that because he committed suicide, Judas never got to experience Jesus' forgiveness. It was the first time I ever thought about how Jesus would have reacted to meeting Judas again after His resurrection, had Judas still been alive. Can you picture Judas, trying to make himself invisible, so Jesus wouldn't notice him? Or maybe falling on his knees, apologizing over and over for all the pain his actions caused, cringing from the anger he expected? Never in a million years would he have expected the love and forgiveness we know Jesus would have given him.

No matter how big our sins are, God's grace is always big enough to cover them. Even Judas' betrayal would have disappeared under the covering of His grace and love. That goes for all of our sins, too.