Fabric

by Daria Kluender

I had such a beautiful piece of fabric. It was so soft, so intricate, so sweet and fragile. My fabric was to be used to make the most wonderful, cherished things for my home. It was soft and lovely. I used to hold it against my cheek and thank God for it. It flowed and danced when I spun around with it, enjoying its beauty. Its colors were rich.

One day, Satan came, and seeing how I thanked God for my lovely fabric and how much I loved it, he came and snatched it from my hands. While I cried, he ripped it to pieces in front of me. In one blow he tore it apart. Sneering, as he relished his catastrophe. My fabric lay twisted and shredded in rags on the floor.

As I fell to my knees, “Jesus, no. Please, no. Not this piece. Any other, but please, not this one.”

Jesus came. He knelt on the ground with me, my chaos around me.

Piece by piece he ever so gently picked up those shreds. He held up each piece to the light. He studied it with His loving gaze. “This will go this way and that will go that way.”

With needle and holy thread, He began to place the pieces of my beautiful fabric together. A straight stitch here, a basting stitch there. Here a small mend, there a larger one. Here a square piece, there a round one. Here a jagged edge smoothed, there a tear put together.

Stitch upon stitch, layer upon layer, he began to pick up each torn piece and place it lovingly back together. Smiling as He went. “Daria don’t cry. I am making something useful and lovely. Just wait and see.”

And so, the mending and sewing went on and on. The gazing, the studying, the placing, the stitching…the smiling. I watched as He worked, so patiently and quietly. He dried my tears as He went.

The holy thread He used, so scarlet and deep. Could it truly be? It was dyed red from His own blood shed for me.

One day Jesus stood up. In His hands my fabric. Once whole and unused, then shredded, now became the most beautiful, patched quilt I had ever seen.

“Daria, you see, in my hands your fabric lives. Now it is something useful and warm, beautiful and purposeful.”

As I looked, streams and streams of crimson red thread held together the mismatched, yet somehow perfectly placed pieces. Once tattered, now whole, once lost now found. A patchwork quilt held strong by His shed blood. This now… is my life in Him.