Muddied Water

Devotion for the week...

I said a couple of weeks ago that I find the prophets hard to read. Even though that's true, there is obviously value in reading those books, which is proven by the fact that this is another devotion coming from what I've been reading in Ezekiel lately!

Ezekiel 34: 17-22 says: 

"And as for you, my flock, this is what the Sovereign Lord says to his people: I will judge between one animal of the flock and another, separating the sheep from the goats. Isn’t it enough for you to keep the best of the pastures for yourselves? Must you also trample down the rest? Isn’t it enough for you to drink clear water for yourselves? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? Why must my flock eat what you have trampled down and drink water you have fouled?

'"Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will surely judge between the fat sheep and the scrawny sheep. For you fat sheep pushed and butted and crowded my sick and hungry flock until you scattered them to distant lands. So I will rescue my flock, and they will no longer be abused. I will judge between one animal of the flock and another."

If you've ever wondered how God feels about society's 'me first' focus, these verses should clear that up pretty quickly. This message wasn't aimed at the religious leaders (that was covered in previous verses); instead, it's aimed at everyday people like you and me. God wanted them (and us) to know in no uncertain terms that their habit of taking the best for themselves and ruining what they left behind was not right.

When I read 'Isn’t it enough for you to drink clear water for yourselves? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet?' all I could think about what the plastic pollution in our oceans. I don't have a clear understanding of how that affects communities in other countries, but I know it's nothing good.

Most of us would fit into the category of the 'fat sheep' of this world. We have a roof over our heads,  enough food to fill our bellies, more clothes than we reasonably need, and more besides. While we're not actively going out and trampling the harvest in other parts of the world, are our choices negatively affecting other people? 

My First Quilt with Rianne Doller

I'm not entirely sure where March went 😆 Here we are at the last Friday of the month, though, which means it's time for a My First Quilt interview! This month we get to learn about Rianne Doller's first quilt.

As a quilter, Rianne shares her love for storytelling, art, community, and nature in the works she creates. For the nature and community aspect, she finished two master degrees. For all the other things, she started a social enterprise called Kick Ass Quilts. With tutorials, stories, and community projects, she spreads the magic of eco-conscious quilting!

You can connect with Rianne at her website, on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Patreon.

And now, here is Rianne and her first quilt! It's so scrappy and fun 😍

What year did you make your first quilt? What prompted you to make it?

I think it was around 2015 when I was doing my first master's thesis. Although I love the whole researching thing, it was a challenging time for me because I had to do many social things that scared me. Quilting helped me to relax and also offered a way to escape. I could create something that made my brain happy. And I could forget about my thesis doing the mindfulness quilting work because my first quilt had MANY small pieces. 

What techniques were used in that first quilt? Did you quilt it yourself?

I made templates by hand from cardboard. I drew all the pieces and pieced them together by patchwork. 

The quilt was quilted by myself by hand. 

This quilt was also my first step into experimenting with quilting with all kinds of fabrics. Because people kept telling me you couldn't quilt with x or Y and, being the headstrong student I was, I wanted to prove them otherwise :P. So I asked for textiles on FB and I raided my mom's quilting scraps and this quilt was born!

Furthermore, in this quilt, I learned basic scrap quilt principles and colour theory. Especially the concept that every quilt becomes a whole if there is a red thread in the fabrics chosen. Which, coincidentally, in this quilt was a specific red fabric!

Who taught you to make the quilt?

I taught myself based on the quilting basics my mom taught me. I always love figuring out my own quilting designs with graph paper. 

Are the colours you chose for your first quilt ones you would still choose today?

Yes, I still love scrap quilts. However, if I would make this quilt again, it would probably be a bit more calm. 

Did you fall in love with quilting right away? Or was there a gap between making the first quilt and the next one?

Yes! Quilting works very well for my brain. Since I properly started, it has been my way of making sense of the world around me. And to express my care for people and the world with the quilts I make. It makes me happy that these days I have much more social confidence and I can spread the magic of quilting with others! With tutorials, networking, community projects and more!

Where is the quilt now?

In my home. I still use it in self-care, healing sessions and empowerment for myself. 

Is there anything you wish you could go back and tell yourself as you made that first quilt?

Yes, your seams should be at least half a centimeter big!

Anything else you want to share about your first quilt?

I really made this quilt with full confidence in myself and zero restrictions. This helped me a lot to discover my own creativity and to find creative freedom in the art of quilting. This helped me a lot to become the quilt artist and confident person I am today!

So I encourage everyone to go for it if you have a crazy quilting idea! It'll probably work out, and they make the most fun personal crazy interesting quilts!

Thanks, Rianne for sharing the story of your first quilt with us!

It's Not Fair!

Devotion for the week...

It has been a busy week, so writing a devotion for today ended up on the back burner. Good thing I have a treasure trove of previously loved devotions to pull from when I need to! Here's one from March 2015. Thankfully I'm no longer working in childcare, but the illustrations from those years still hold true 😊

________________

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, then you probably know I spend my days in the company of the four kids I babysit, while my own kids are in school. I have been around little ones for almost 13 years straight, and I have noticed that they really like for things to be fair, especially when it comes to food.

Don't give one child two pieces of a broken cookie and the other child a full cookie unless you're willing to hear, "Why does he get two cookies?" Be sure the pieces of cake you cut look pretty much the same, or there will be complaints about someone getting a bigger piece. And for goodness sake, make sure when you give out a handful of crackers that everyone either has the same number, or they have so many they're not going to bother counting!

They like things to be fair when it comes to taking turns with the best toys too. Everyone needs to have the same number of turns, and for the same amount of time. While I have never actually set a timer to be sure each child gets 5 minutes with the coveted toy, I know mothers who do in order to keep the peace and save their own sanity.

While we as adults know that fair doesn't always mean exactly the same, we like for things to be fair too. We want people to be paid a fair wage, for companies to be fair and honest in their advertising, for sports teams to follow the rules. We want to be given the same opportunities as others, regardless of our race, religion or gender. When these things don't happen, we too are quick to say, "That's not fair!"

Sometimes 'not fair' works in our favour, and then we're not quite so quick to protest the unfairness of the situation. That is certainly the case when it comes to our salvation. Jesus was perfect, completely without sin, and it was He who paid the price for our sins. He had never done anything wrong, and yet He was brutally beaten and murdered.

The Bible says, "For the wages of sin is death," (Romans 6:23). It also says, "The Lord looks down from heaven on the entire human race; he looks to see if anyone is truly wise, if anyone seeks God. But no, all have turned away; all have become corrupt. No one does good, not a single one!" (Psalm 14:2-3). Everyone is turned away from God, everyone is corrupt, and no one does good. That is the natural inclination of every human heart, and for that we all deserve death. That would be the fair outcome of our lives.

But that isn't what we get.

Jesus came for us. He came to rescue us and free us from that death sentence. How? "For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Because Jesus was perfect, He alone was qualified to be the sacrifice that would pay for our sin. He took the sin of the entire world on Himself and paid the penalty of death for it. That's the most unfair transaction ever!

Discipline

Devotion for the week...

Can I share a confession? I find the prophets really hard to read. There's so much doom and destruction, and reading that for chapter after chapter after chapter gets mind-numbing. I think I find the lists in Numbers easier to get through! 

I usually read the Bible straight through (slowly!), a little bit each morning, but sometime last year I was struggling to read Ezekiel, bogged down in the destruction being prophesied, and I finally gave myself permission to leave it and skip ahead. The next morning I flipped to Matthew and breathed a sigh of relief as I started reading. Well, last week I reached the end of Revelation, so I flipped back to the bookmark I had left in Ezekiel and started tackling that again.

Saturday morning I finished off Ezekiel chapter 30 and a couple of verses caught my attention: "When I put my sword in the hand of Babylon’s king and he brings it against the land of Egypt, Egypt will know that I am the Lord. I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, dispersing them throughout the earth. Then they will know that I am the Lord" (Ezekiel 30:25-26).

What stopped me in my tracks was that God said Egypt would know that He is the Lord when everything goes wrong for them, when they are subject to complete destruction.

We tend to think God is working in our situations when things are getting better, when we see good things happening, and when our prayers are being answered the way we want. Here, though, God is saying He will be working in this situation when nothing is going the way the Egyptians want.

Now, to be fair, this is because the Egyptians are coming under His judgement, so it makes sense that His hand is extended in punishment rather than blessing. What we often don't consider when something is going wrong in our own lives, is that the situation could be God disciplining us, too.

"Have you forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you as his children? He said,

'My child, don’t make light of the Lord’s discipline,

    and don’t give up when he corrects you.

For the Lord disciplines those he loves,

    and he punishes each one he accepts as his child.'

As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father?...But God’s discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness. No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way." (Hebrews 12:5-7, 10-11).

God doesn't only deal in sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes His hand may be extended towards us in discipline and we won't like it at all. That's not to say that every bad thing that happens to us is discipline from God! When things are going wrong, though, it might be worth considering if there's something in our lives God could be disciplining us for. We'll learn the lesson contained in the discipline a lot faster if we recognize it as His hand working to bring us closer to that peaceful harvest of right living.

Note, I'll be away all this week for my grandmother's funeral, so there will be no devotion next week. I would appreciate your prayers for our family.

The Men Who Brought Her to Jesus

Devotion for the week...

Last week we looked at the story of the woman caught in adultery, found in John, chapter 8. Today I want us to consider the men who dragged her to Jesus in an attempt to trick Him into saying something they could use against Him. This two-part series was originally part of the Moments with Jesus QAL and Devotional Journey. 

We don’t know much about these men, except that they were "the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees" (John 8:30), meaning they held positions of authority in the community, and they were threatened by Jesus' popularity with the people.

From their actions with this unnamed woman, we can deduce a few other things. Since they couldn’t know how Jesus would answer them, they had to have been okay with the possibility that taking her to Him for judgement would mean her death. They didn’t mind shaming her in front of the crowd, either. It’s obvious they had no consideration for her whatsoever, probably because they saw her as 'sinful' which meant she was beneath them.

But then Jesus wrote…something… on the ground, and stood up and told them they could go right ahead and stone her, but "let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!" (John 8:7).

Can you picture the men shuffling their feet, maybe looking sideways at each other, wondering who would move first? Did any of them dare to pretend they had never sinned? And then "they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman" (John 8:9). I’m guessing the oldest left first because they were better able to see the truth about themselves, or maybe because they didn’t feel the need to pretend they were without sin like the younger ones may have.

When they dragged the woman in front of Jesus, these men were so sure of themselves, so confident they were in the right, and only she was in need of judgement. Whatever Jesus wrote in the dirt, though, it was enough to challenge their view of themselves and their right to judge her. Jesus was gentle even as He corrected them. He could have pointed to each one individually and listed off their sins for everyone to hear, but He didn’t. Instead He wrote something that made them realize the truth on their own.

I don’t want to compare myself to these men at all, and you probably don’t either. I don’t want to even entertain the possibility that I’m like them, but maybe we, too, need a reminder that we aren’t as sinless as we’d like to think we are. 

Thankfully, God is gentle with us, too. He might use something someone says, a song we hear, or a verse that stands out as we read our Bibles, to call us out and remind us that we’re not without sin. That reminder should serve to remind us, too, that we shouldn’t be so quick to judge, and especially to broadcast, the sins of other people.

12 Years of Devoted Quilter

On this day in 2013, I hit publish on my first blog post. I had no idea if anyone would ever read it, or how I would connect with other quilt bloggers out there, but I published that post anyway. I figured I could figure out the connecting with others part once the blog was actually started 😄 

Thankfully there were linky parties and blog hops to help make those connections, so it was surprisingly easy to find other people who share my obsession with quilting. In fact, by my second month of blogging, I had already connected with the TGIFF linky party (of which I'm now one of three managers). I still use the thread catcher I shared the first time I linked to TGIFF. I keep it in my hand stitching bag, so it appears in pictures now and then, too. Here it is in the background of a picture I took of a hexie flower I made Tuesday morning as we were driving out of town.

I read my very first post again while writing this post, and I was entertained to see the two projects I shared as examples of my WIPs. Neither of them are finished 😂 The blocks I shared then are still just blocks today. I ran out of some of the fabrics in the kit, so I couldn't finish the blocks that are missing, and just set the whole thing aside. I should use the finished blocks for something so they can be set free from the box.

The hexagon flowers I shared in the post were pieced into a quilt top in 2014, which was basted for hand quilting in 2017. I think I quilted around one flower and then gave up! As I've been doing the big stitch hand quilting on my Hexie Rainbow quilt, I've been thinking about doing big stitch quilting on that old hexie flower quilt, too, so there's hope it may actually get finished someday. Obviously I've always been in need of a good WIPS-B-GONE challenge!

I'm planning to make a chocolate cake today to celebrate my anniversary. Since I can't send chocolate cake through the screen to share it with you, I'm having my annual Anniversary Pattern Sale so you can join the celebration, too. Saving money and dreaming about the next quilt (and the one after that, and the one after that...) is just as good as having cake!

From now through Thursday, March 6th, save 25% on all patterns in my shop (printed or PDF), no coupon code needed. The sale price is already applied.

Whether you've been here since last week or since 2013, I'm so glad we're able to connect over our love of fabric and thread! The friendships are my favourite part of this online quilting community (and the reason I get serious FOMO every year when people are sharing pictures of their QuiltCon meetups)! Let's keep making the world more beautiful, one quilt at a time 😊