A Dragon Finish

This working on projects consistently thing actually works to get them to the finish line! Who would have thought?? 

I started the WIPS-B-GONE challenge to get a little accountability to finish my dragon cross stitch and I'm so happy that it is now finished.

This is The Castle, designed by Teresa Wentzler, and I started it close to 20 years ago. Mostly it just sat untouched, but every now and then I'd pick it up for a few days and then it would languish again. Once I started working on it for WIPS-B-GONE, I was amazed by how quickly I could make progress. Even though some days I could only spend 15 minutes at it, those bits of work still added up.

I shared my dragon a few weeks ago, when the cross stitching part was finished and I was ready to start the backstitching. Here's a side-by-side comparison to show the difference the backstitching makes. Isn't it amazing how the simple backstitching lines make the whole thing come into focus? It doesn't hurt that I pressed it before taking the finished picture, too.

I love the details of the face and around the castle towers.

And the details in the wing.

I've always loved rocks, so it makes me happy that the pattern includes so much variation in the rocks, even if it did feel like it took forever to stitch around them.

I'm planning to have the dragon professionally framed, but I'm not sure when that will happen. There are no framers in our town, so it requires a trip to a city two hours away, then another trip again to pick it up after it's ready. It definitely won't be waiting 20 years this time, though!

Advent 2021 - The Fulness of the Time

 Devotion for  the Week...

It's the first Sunday of Advent! Do you have your tree up yet? We always put ours up the first weekend of December, so we don't yet, but I've been seeing more and more decorated trees popping up on my social media feeds. I love getting to see how other people decorate for Christmas.

This Advent season I'm going to be sharing devotions that focus on God's timing. Galatians 4:4-5 say, "But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children." That's in the New Living Translation. In the more famous King James Version, verse 4 starts off, "But when the fulness of the time was come." There's something beautiful about the phrase the fulness of the time, isn't there?

Isaiah prophesied the coming of the Messiah about 700 years before Jesus was born. That's a long time for the people to Israel to have waited! So what made Mary's day the right time, compared to the hundreds of years that had already passed? Unfortunately, the Bible doesn't tell us what the criteria were for choosing the time of Jesus' birth.

One theory is that God waited for the arrival of the Roman Empire. The Romans created peace that allowed for travel between many places, which allowed the gospel to spread quickly and easily. There was also a common working language that was understood by people in many different places, which would have allowed Christians to share their good news without being hampered by language barriers.

I was amused once to hear someone say that Jesus was born in Bethlehem because the Roman emperor was getting low on funds, prompting him to call for a census so he could get more tax revenue. Was the state of the emperor's budget part of God's criteria for the right time?

Those are only human speculation, of course. Maybe the right time had more to do with Mary and her willing spirit or with things we know nothing about. Only God knows what made that time the right time. 

The same truth applies to situations in our everyday lives, too. Is there something you've been waiting for? Maybe you've been waiting and praying for so long it feels like it has been 700 years. Whatever it is, God knows when the right time will be for the answer to come. We know when we want things to happen (now, please!), but God is waiting for His criteria to be met so that He answers at the right time.

You can't rush the fulness of the time, whether it's for healing for your loved one or salvation for the entire world.

Take The Opportunities

 Devotion for the Week...

Most of our fall has been grey, cloudy and drizzly. It has been hard to be motivated to get outside, to say the least. Saturday morning, then, it was a real treat to wake up to a bright, sunny morning. My usual routine on a nice Saturday morning is to go for a walk first thing, but Zach had a volleyball tournament that day, so as I headed for the shower to get ready all I could think was how much I wanted to be out in the sun. Then I realized that I was up in time to get Zach to the gym 40 minutes before the game started, but if I weren't the one driving him to the gym, then I could walk there instead and still arrive in time to watch the game. In the end, Paul decided to walk with me and Zach drove himself (yay for teenagers who can drive!) and I had a wonderful half hour in the sun.

We all know that life is busy. There are so many things we have to do (work, household chores, appointments) and so many we want to do (exercise, hobbies, family time) and it's hard to fit it all into our allotted 24 hours a day. We have to make the most of any little opportunities we find to do the things we love. In my case, it meant realizing that I could spend those 30 minutes outside rather than sitting in the gym waiting for the game to start. The Saturday before, when the weather was miserable and I was waiting for the indoor soccer game to start, it meant spending that time on Instagram, catching up on everyone else's progress on the WIPS-B-GONE hashtag.

In Ephesians 5:15-17, Paul wrote, " So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do." We are presented with so many different opportunities each day. There are opportunities to connect with other people, opportunities to help our communities, opportunities to further our careers, to tell others about Jesus, to be creative and to care for ourselves or others. Are we making the most of those opportunities?

I can't tell you the right way to approach your days because we will have different opportunities and different goals. I can say that if we're willing to pay attention - to be careful how we live, as Paul put it, then we'll make the most of the opportunities before us.

We start missing opportunities when we stop paying attention to how we're living. When I'm scrolling on my phone while one of the boys is talking to me, I miss the opportunity to connect with him. When I stay up too late, I miss the opportunity to sleep and take care of myself. 

Not all of the opportunities before us are earth-shaking or life-changing. In fact, most of them will be ordinary, regular life kind of moments that can slip past unnoticed. I still want to make the most of them, though. 

PS. Jeremy Camp has a great song called "Keep Me in the Moment" that sums this up perfectly.