Hidden values

“You never know until you go.”  That’s the slogan my husband uses a lot in his hobby of going to yard sales.  He typically finds bikes and mowers to clean up, fix and re-sell.  But I doubt if he will ever match the surprises reported in one internet article.
*A decorative egg found in a flea market was made of gold so a bit pricey at $14,000. But it proved to be a Faberge Egg, an Easter gift from a Russian czar to his wife in 1887, thought lost. The winning auction bid: $33 million.
*An old Flemish painting in an old frame, $3 at a thrift store in South Carolina. Proven to have been produced around 1650, it was auctioned at $190,000.
*Two of the 24 original copies of the Declaration of Independence surfaced.  One, found in pristine condition hidden behind a painting bought for $4 at a Pennsylvania  thrift shop, fetched $2.4 million. Another came off somebody’s garage wall during a “clutter” purge, was bought for $2.48 at a Tennessee thrift store, and fetched $477,650 at an auction.
*A sweater bought for a dollar at a Tennessee thrift store had a clue inside: a nametag that said “Vince Lombardi,” the legendary football coach. It auctioned for $43,020.
*A piece of jewelry purchased at a Philadelphia flea market brought its owner lots of compliments. Then she learned it had been made by famed American sculptor Alexander Calder, and was once displayed at the New York Museum of Modern Art.  It sold to Christie’s for $267,750.
*An abstract painting donated to a church yard sale in North Carolina got no takers, so ended up at a local Goodwill. A local artist stopped in the store for a blanket and noticed it, thinking she could repurpose the canvas for her own zany-cat paintings. A friend suggested she research the artist’s name, “Illya Bolowsky,” found to be a giant of abstract art.  Titled “Vertical Diamond,” it brought $34,375 at auction.

THE NEED IS THERE

When I go along to yard sales, I’m not out for auction-worthy items. I look for simple things: fabric scraps, batting, yarn.  These I transform into baby blankets that I give hospital obstetrics departments to distribute to the “very needy,” as they see fit. I started this project some six years ago after learning how many “very poor” show up to give birth.  One nurse remarked recently as I left several blankets, “We’re having more and more homeless come in.”  At another hospital, a nurse pulled a blue blanket from the middle of the stack I’d just brought in and said, “This will go home with a baby boy tomorrow.”  Well, not home, she added.  Foster care.  Another nurse told of giving a blanket to a woman who came in alone to deliver her fifth baby, crying through the whole process.  There was a language barrier, too. The nurse just gave her one of my blankets as encouragement in this unexplained but traumatic situation.

Though I’ve found “blanket makings” at yard sales and thrift stores, I’ve also been blessed by people who just gave me fabric and batting. One woman and her mother brought me a huge box of serger cone thread in various colors. Some have just given me gift cards to a fabric store. One gift card (from two people) was for $100.  It took my breath away. Every time I swiped that card to buy remnants or on-sale items, I silently said, “Thank you, Lord.  Bless them.”

About a month ago I posed my two older grandsons with the latest “stash” of just-sewn blankets. As infants they got their own specially Nana-sewn blankets. But these will go to a local hospital to bless babies I will never meet. But God knows them.  So far, the blanket project stands at 838. I never know who eventually gets them. But the babies they will warm: priceless.My role model for doing this, a lady in Proverbs 31:She selects wool and flax [or juvenile print flannels!] and works with eager hands...She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy. (vv. 13, 20)

Scraps

The tattooed young man giving his testimony at my church didn’t try to hide the messy details. He grew up in a dysfunctional home. Got into substance abuse. Sold drugs. Fathered a child with his girlfriend. He ended up in prison....where he found a Bible and started reading it. Ended up trusting Christ to turn his life around. Able now to say, “Jesus saved me.  I’m headed in the right direction.”  I’d rather hear that, than this, which I've also heard from a young adult: “I grew up going to church. I hate my life.  I hate my mom/dad. God hasn’t been fair to me. I pray and nothing happens. Just leave me alone.”

The first person is holding out the ragged scraps of his life, saying, “Jesus, use these as you wish.”  The second person is clutching rotted rags, unwilling to let God trim and rearrange to craft “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

My ministry “hobby” involves scraps of flannel or soft cotton, which I find at yard sales or thrift stores or am given. I cut them into five-inch squares, which I sew together, seven rows across and seven down.  These create a "patchwork" side to go with a one-yard piece of soft backing fabric. With batting between, the sides are joined with yarn ties at each square and stitching around the edges. Two hours later a new baby blanket emerges, destined with others for a local hospital to be distributed to babies born to needy families. In the last five years, I have sewn and given away more than 600. 

Redeemed-scraps-turned-blankets finished and delivered in July

Six hundred? Gasp. My initial “big goal” was fifty.  But when God calls you to a task, He will carry you through it until He pronounces it “done” or sees that you need to take a break (which is now my situation). So what does this have to do with the ragged scraps of a human life? It's this: God wastes nothing.  Those who come to God, sadly holding the scraps of their lives, can experience Jesus as Redeemer. He is a Master at trimming and fitting those scraps into something new, beautiful, and useful in His kingdom. It may hurt and cut and prick at times, but it's all part of His master pattern.  For unique beauty, and service for Him.

Storage by God

Okay, I went back on my word. I'd once said, “That’s a good number to quit on” when I finished my 500^th patchwork baby blanket of a three-year effort.  These I had donated to three local hospitals for “special needs,” mostly impoverished families with little or nothing for their newborns. The recipients were not known to me, though a nurse friend told of giving one to a crying woman who came in alone to deliver her 5^th baby.  Because of a language barrier, nurses assumed a difficult family situation and unwanted baby. Others went to homeless families.

When I first started, I thought making fifty baby  blankets was a stretch.  I didn’t count on God’s storage containers.When word got out of my project, He opened the trap doors at the bottom of the “supplies elevator.”  From what people gave me or I found for a pittance at yard sales or thrift stores, the project kept growing. My “goals” reached 100, then 250….well, I’m now at 519 and have the raw materials for three more. One thrift store is especially dangerous for me; they get a lot of fabric from estate situations.  While my husband browses for books (he likes to donate quality children’s books to schools), he leaves me alone to dig through the fabric piles.

On one recent trip through farmlands, I had to smile when I sensed an analogy between my “blanket ministry” and the grain storage towers along the route.  I thought of that famed verse (used for many tithing sermons) from Malachi 3:10:

“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.  Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.”
Malachi was right about “not have room enough for it.” We live in what’s called a “starter home,” meaning small, about right for a couple. We raised two children in it and now it’s full of grandkid play stuff and books. I don’t have the luxury of a sewing suite, so the supplies get stuffed under beds or tucked behind my clothes in the closet. Having little storage means I sew the blankets up as quickly as I can.

Oh, the ways people “supplied”! One woman I met at a yard sale gave me four bulging garbage bags of flannel scraps from dozens of pajamas she had sewn (I think as a business).  I had to piece them, but seventeen baby blankets resulted.  Another time I found two garbage bags full of fabric scraps left at our house. A third woman delivered boxes of fabric she cleaned out from her quilting hobby.

I think God grinned as He poured it out. As I neared my 500^th blanket, I learned that other seamstresses had taken up the cause. As though He was removing this “ministry,” both the compulsion and supply eased up, except for a few from time to time.

My sewing skills aren’t anything famous. But I’ve learned God can even use the lesser-skilled for assignments that you’d say “no way!” if God wasn’t in it to prod you on and pour down the materials.

Patchwork

Photo: my latest patchwork baby quilt project.
I was at the fabric store a few weeks ago and ran into a friend who runs a fruit stand. During the slow winter season she sews aprons to sell in their gift line, so was shopping for cheerful fabric to stitch up more.

“Do you still make those baby patchwork blankets?” she asked. One of her sons was a blanket recipient two decades ago.

“Yes,” I admitted. I’ve lost count, but know I’ve sewn more than 200 over the years. Because each blanket is comprised of eighty five-inch squares, I’m always looking for bright, fresh cottons for a nice variety.

“Would you like some scraps?” she added.

Do cats like cat treats? Do dogs like bones?

Twice in the next few weeks she dropped off the scraps from her latest projects. It was just what I needed to chase the gray winter blues. Some people may get excited about sky-diving, exploring sunken wrecks, or climbing Mount Everest. As for me, just give me an old bag of scraps, my rolling cutter and my well-scarred cutting board.

Random patchwork may not be everybody’s idea of “beautiful,” but it is mine. I enjoy the vibrancy of color and design. The baby quilts are also a great tool for teaching children their colors and names of objects. But what I like best is the spiritual symbolism of patchwork. People without a spiritual focus are like a bag of scraps. A corner, a length on the fold, cutouts—by themselves, they’re not of much use.

But give those scraps to the Master Designer, the One whose fingers touched the earth to bring forth amazing mountains, lakes, flowers, animals, sea life and so much more. Kindly, deftly, He lays His perfect pattern on those motley pieces. If they could talk, they might say “Ouch!” as they’re cut to size. But they need to trust that each cut is made with compassion and purpose. Finally, He joins them together to make something lovely out of the world’s discards.

I’ve seen it happen to real people, over and over. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Beauty from scraps. That’s God’s way.