Imperfect Tense

That’s a quilt I’ve been working on and it most certainly imperfect, and in a way, it has made me tense. This photo is when I was pinning the layers together – the back, the batting and the pieced top (or flimsy, as I’ve seen it well described.) Today I finished quilting the top and spent some time on it’s imperfections.

My Bible tells me that God is perfect and that’s my goal:

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. (Matthew 5:48 KJV)

I’ve been reading that, studying about that, living with it for more than seven decades and there are still errors in me, just as in this little quilt. The good thing is that I believe we learn from the errors and do better when we apply the lessons. Problems come from ignoring the lessons and we don’t learn to do better.

Too often we do ignore the lesson because it does not fit into what we have in mind. In quilting, a good number of my errors come when I do not have the “big picture,” the end product if you will, in my mind and keep that pattern in place.  Instead, a twist of cloth here or there throws the pattern out and there is a different result. That, too, reminds me of how God works with our errors:

For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? (Esther 4:14 KJV)

God placed Esther right where she needed to be – but she was not the only life in His hands. Had she not responded, deliverance for God’s people would be provided – a different pattern, but achieving God’s plan for His people.

So, if we are not absolutely necessary for God’s plan to be achieved, what shouldn’t we do as we please, certain that He is able to see His will is accomplished? For me, it’s a matter of love.

We love him, because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19 KJV)

I love Him, too, because He turned His loved into action to show His love:

And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, (Revelation 1:5 KJV)

I believe the recipient of this heart quilt will see the love that went into it. They will know it was sewn with love and prayers specifically for one individual. I do not know if it will be appreciated, though, and that does not change one thing about my gift or my love. Such is God’s gift to us, not dependent upon our reception. Yet, as Paul, even recognizing my imperfection, I am not tense. I simply press, building on lessons learned:

Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14 KJV)