Hi! Cara here to share with you today.
My friend Christa and I recently started a knitting group because quite a few homeless (the group our small group serves) women enjoy knitting or crocheting. We just started this group a few weeks ago and when we started we decided that we would make projects with a purpose...our first being blankets, hats, booties for babies and scarves and hats for moms to take to a Pregnancy Crisis Center in our area.
As we began, my friend read this scripture from Psalm 139: 13-16:
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
I love that she shared that before we even began and I love that God has a verse about knitting. :) Anyway, as everyone began choosing their projects and the yarn they would use, one of the women chose a neon green and neon orange yarn to start a blanket. One of the other women says to her "boy, I hope that baby is color-blind". Trying to ease over any hurt feelings, I said "yes, it will certainly be bright, but you know some people really like bright colors---I enjoy bright colors...I love scrapbooking with bright colors!". Ok...hurt feelings averted, maybe?
Fast forward to a couple days ago...this same woman has texted my friend Christa saying she needs more yarn and has requested certain colors (colors that Christa and I agree will NOT go with neon orange and green...so Christa has also included some other brighter colors in the mix that would definitely match a little better). Christa calls me, says she is sick, but wonders if I could take it to her...and "my job" is to politely steer her toward these brighter colors (and not the pastels she has requested). So, this morning, I go and take it to her and ask to see her progress on the blanket. And OH MY.....there lies one of the ugliest blankets I've ever seen...neon orange and green, along with some funky textured white and a MAUVE/ROSE colored yarn. This display is a dismay to every color-theorist out there. BUT she is so proud of it. And says she'll just keep incorporating lots of different colors. I smile, think to myself that this blanket is beyond any "color rescue" and I leave behind the bag filled with pastels and brights not saying one word about color selection. Yes, this blanket is, unfortunately, going to get even uglier (I text Christa and tell her the bad news).
As I get home and walk into my home I'm thinking to myself, "no one is going to like or appreciate that ugly blanket"...then God shoots me a zinger....I hear this "God whisper" saying "You were once an ugly blanket, but I loved you".
Wow...YES, I was. Though when I was born I was a God-made, beautiful, knit-together creation...time and sin allowed for the beauty to get stained, marred, charred and yes, even ugly. But when I accepted Christ, He washed me clean...back to that perfection and I stay that way in His eyes...not because I don't sin (oh, trust me, I do...we all do), but because when He sees me, He no longer sees the "ugly blanket", He sees Christ.
(and, by the way, Christa and I have agreed to pray over that blanket when it's complete....that whoever receives it would not see it as a mish-mash of strange color combinations but would see the love this woman put into it and feel the sweet hugs she gives to so many)
