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.