An Advanced Pattern

Devotion for the Week...

One of my many works-in-progress is Jinny Beyer's Golden Album Quilt. My husband gave me the fabric kit for my birthday, so in theory my quilt should look exactly like the one on the cover of the book.

 I say 'in theory' because this quilt is taking every bit of precision I can muster.

Blocks 1-8

Blocks 9-11 and 13 (Not enough of one of the fabrics for block 12, I hope to sub in a similar one after the other blocks are finished, or I'll have to order more)

While I'm having a lot of fun stretching my quilting skills, not everyone likes to tackle advanced patterns. Some find them too tedious, or they quilt to have time to relax without thinking too hard. There's nothing wrong with that. Quilting is supposed to be a pleasant activity, however you want to do it. Passing through levels of difficulty isn't required.

As Christians, though, there are expectations placed upon us. New Christians need everything explained to them because they are only learning about Jesus, about salvation by faith and about living to please God. Gradually, these new believers should begin to study for themselves. All of us should read our Bibles and try to understand what we read. When we listen to a sermon or read a book about Christian living, we should compare the speaker's or author's views with what we understand from our own time reading the Bible.

Making quilts with only the skills I have already learned is a perfectly acceptable choice. Staying at the same level spiritually is not. I can almost hear the frustration behind these words in Hebrews:

"We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you should be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained 

themselves to distinguish good from evil."  Hebrews 5:11-14

The Hebrew believers were stuck in spiritual infancy. They should have been moving forward to the place where they could begin teaching others because they had a firm grasp of the basics, but instead they still needed to be fed simple teachings about repentance, faith, baptism and more (Hebrews 6:1,2).

Whatever your quilting interests, are you challenging yourself with spiritual matters? Do you read your Bible for yourself, asking the Holy Spirit to help you as you struggle to understand some of what you read? When you participate in a Bible study, do you look at the material critically to see if you agree with how the Scriptures are being interpreted?

What sort of Christians will we be 5 or 10 years from now? Let's not rely on others to feed us the spiritual food found in God's word. As we read it, study it and nurture ourselves with it, we will grow in spiritual maturity.