CUT HERE

 My mother was the consummate seamstress whose skills extended to men's suits and wedding dresses. The memories are faded now, but I'm sure she put every extension leaf in our dining table, spread the fabric, topped it with a flimsy paper pattern, and cut away. My “cutting surface” is a folding cardboard board on top of our guest bed. Although I don't sew much clothing now aside from pajamas and nightgowns for my grandchildren, my patterns are worn and torn.

A few weeks ago, as I twisted and turned the pattern pieces to fit my barely-enough piece of fabric, I mused about the Biblical passages about “patterns.” God doesn't leave anything to whim or chance. One big example was the building of Israel's first worship center, the Tabernacle, which the Israelites put up, disassembled, carried, put up, disassembled, carried...for nearly four decades in a desert. Finally, it found a resting place in the Promised Land. When they were building it, God warned Moses: “See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain” (Exodus 25:40, quoted in Hebrews 8:5). Somehow, God communicated the whole building plan. It would be fresh, holy, and not at all like the pagan worship centers they'd seen in Egypt.

Just as God had specific ideas for His worship centers, He has specific instructions for human behavior. We're to be different—God-chosen people. The apostle Paul expressed it this way” “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will it—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2).

Sometimes, I roll my eyes and ask, “What next?” as our culture sinks deeper into normalizing sinful, immoral, and selfish behavior. “Everybody's doing it” becomes the reason to do it, even when God drew the line for morality and propriety that should characterize His followers.

Sadly, it's nothing new. I have a sticky-note marker in several “behavior” passages of my Bible so I can review what God's standards are—and are not. Especially in his letter to the Ephesian church, Paul had to pull believers away from the common behaviors of their sin-soaked culture. In chapters 4 and 5 he dealt with:

*Mouth sins (lies, anger, unwholesome talk, slander, obscenity, foolish talk, coarse joking)

*Selfishness sins (greed, stealing, not doing honest work so they could share with the truly needy)

*Relational sins (bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, every form of malice)

*Moral sins (sexual immorality, every kind of impurity).

His conclusion was emphatic: “God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them” (Ephesians 5:7). In other words, don't let the world lay its pattern of sin and rebellion on the fresh cloth of God's love and righteousness.

How is that accomplished? One way, by letting our minds get saturated with scripture so we're attuned to “God's pattern.” Other ways: heeding the counsel and example of mature Christians. Paul expressed it this way in a letter to his protege Timothy—the old apostle's last written communication that we still have: “What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 1:13).

My current grandchild “pajama” projects feature designs with cats, penguins, and a Disney princess. Oh, the interests of these little kids who will outlive me, and impact their culture. I pray for them—that their moral and spiritual “pattern” will come out of the scriptures, and that they grow up to display their love of God through upright and caring behavior to those around them. In other words, “cut” right!

A 'DON'T QUIT' QUILT

Every year or so, when a really hot day comes our way, I wash the “Log Cabin” quilt I made for our bed. After the hour-long wash cycle has removed its dust and grime, I hang it up on my retractable clothesline—with PVC pipe to keep it from dragging--for its all-day drying. That's when I realize how amateur it is. Real quilters do “Log Cabin” the right way: with each block made of dark fabric strips on one half, and light the other side. They're anchored by a red center block, symbolizing the hearth of the home. As this picture shows, I did my own thing. Still, I hope it's a treasure my adult children will appreciate when I am gone.

I chose the pattern because it seemed an easy one for someone with medium sewing skills, but I veered from tradition by making the anchoring block a floral yellow, not red as for fire. Later, reading about the origin of this pattern, realized how important fire was. In her book Quilts from Heaven (B&H, 1999, 2007), my talented author-speaker friend Lucinda Secrest McDowell explained how this quilt pattern represented the pioneer history of its era—around 1810-1830. Pioneer women endured rustic homes, with those homesteading often starting with a house of sod. (Lucinda's fun remark: “How do you clean house when it's mud to begin with?”). Later came a log cabin of trees felled on the land, not sawn to precision in a computer-supervised mill. Thus, unique quilts of shaded colors and graded fabric strips.

But a deeper symbolism of the quilts is this, Lucinda noted. Those who consider themselves “home-makers” (and men are as much a part of the team as women) “also become builders of a sort: We build atmosphere; we build belonging; we build lives” (p. 63).

Life isn't perfect. And maybe that makes my amateur quilt more true to life. My circle of influence include families broken in health and spirit. Those who care about them try to prop up a sagging relational wall or patch a leaky reality roof. But only Jesus can renovate or repair in the ways that really matter. “Unless the Lord builds the house,” the psalmist said (127:1), “they labor in vain that build it.”

My internet home page recently featured photos of multi-million-dollar mansions that stand today in disrepair, so run down the most cost-efficient “repair” would be to bulldoze them and start over. Perhaps with something more affordable! And maybe that's a picture of common pipe dreams of how life should “be.” We imagine the perfect spouse, children or house—but those dreams fall apart because we live in a fallen world.

There's only one Builder who can repair and reconstruct in things that matter. And it's not Bob the Builder. It's the One who was born in a barn, and now lives in heavenly grandeur we can't even imagine. But He also lives in and among us, ready to help us shape the scraps of our lives into something unique...and truly splendid.

JESUS PAID IT ALL

(Part of a monthly series on inspiring hymn stories.) Elvina Mable Hall was 45 years old and a bit bored as she sat in the choir loft one spring Sunday in 1865. According to one researcher, the pastor prayed much too long. According to another, her mind wandered during his sermon. Whatever it was that Sunday at the Monument Street Methodist Church in Baltimore, Elvina picked up the hymnal and in its flyleaf scribbled a poem that came to her. The four verses began:

I hear my Savior say/Thy strength indeed is small,

Child of weakness, watch and pray,/find in me thine all in all.

When the service ended, and everyone else had left the church, she came up to the pastor and apologetically admitted her mind had wandered. But here was a poem she had written. Would he like to see it?

The pastor turned out to be the matchmaker of lyrics and hymn tune. In his files was a tune written by the church's choir director, a man named John Grape. In “real life” Grape was a coal merchant. But he dabbled in music, as he liked to say. Ira Sankey (known as a song leader for D.L. Moody), in a later book about hymns, reported Grape as saying:

Our church was undergoing some alterations and the cabinet organ was placed in my care. Thus afforded a pleasure not before enjoyed, I delighted myself in playing over our Sunday school hymns. I was determined to give tangible shape to a theme that had been running in my mind for some time—to write...an answer to Mr. Bradbury's beautiful piece, “Jesus Paid it All.” I made it a matter of prayer and study, and gave to the public the music, now known as the tune to “All to Christ I owe.” It was pronounced by poor by my choir and my friends, but my dear wife persistently declared it was a good piece of music and would live. Time has proven the correctness of her judgment.

Remarkably, Elvina's poem and Grape's earlier tune and chorus lyrics were a good fit. The hymn was published three years later, in 1868, in a collection titled “Sabbath Chords.”

How fitting that this marriage of words and tune could come about through an “introduction in church.” It's a meaningful hymn for any time we need the reminder of the cost of our salvation.

For listening or singing along;

This gentle solo version has a country-music-style accompaniment (skip short ad to get to video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9DUKhFhD74

This contemporary rendition, with a more driven tempo at the end, has splendid photography to support the hymn's words:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=%22jESUS+PAID+IT+ALL%22&view=detail&mid=46A71D1306A94E4AAAA446A71D1306A94E4AAAA4&FORM=VIRE0&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3d%2522jESUS%2bPAID%2bIT%2bALL%2522%26form%3dANSPH1%26refig%3d8a2204490f2a40a9b334acba6db1d33b%26pc%3dU531%26sp%3d-1%26pq%3d%2522jesus%2bpaid%2bit%2ball%2522%26sc%3d8-19%26qs%3dn%26sk%3d%26cvid%3d8a2204490f2a40a9b334acba6db1d33b

LEGACY

She died at 80 when I was eleven years old, yet despite our limited contact, I remember with gratitude my great grandmother's spiritual legacy. Born in Norway, as a child she immigrated to America with her parents. But her mother died soon after coming to America. Her father remarried, then he died. His widow remarried, meaning my great grandmother was raised by double stepparents. More sorrow would come. She was married at 19 to another of Norwegian heritage, but he died at 33 after they had four daughters together—my grandmother being the oldest. She remarried and had four more children. Her first name was Rachel (born “Ragnild” in Norway) but we always knew her as “Great Grandma Neely,” the surname of her second husband.

One of my mother's six brothers was a genealogy buff, and before his death produced a 579-page family history—two inches thick—of photos and charts. That's where I found Great Grandma Neely's wedding photo and put together the pieces of her two marriages and perseverance in times when medical care was inadequate and people died young. When she died at 80, that was old.

She spent her “very senior” years visiting her special relatives. That included my mother, who would have been her first grandchild. My mother was the oldest of nine born to great grandma's firstborn and an impoverished Norwegian farmer. When my mother graduated high school, she had no future except to help care for her parents' large, needy family. Great Grandma wanted better for her. By now in her second marriage, and more financially able, she sent money for my mother to travel from eastern Montana to the Longview-Kelso area to live with her. She said she'd make sure my mother got an education to prepare for a life work. I'm not sure what courses my mother took that year at the local junior college, but in attending church she found her true vocation as wife to a young man from Missoula, Mont.

Back to those “Great Grandma” visits. I think, as the youngest, that I gave up my twin bed for Grandma Neely and slept on the couch. Days, she'd sit in my dad's favorite rocker, crochet hook busy when she wasn't reading her black leather Bible or snoozing. For years in our shower we had a crocheted “soap bag” she made. It allowed slivers of soap to be saved and used until they'd entirely melted away. But that wasn't what I remember most.

I was about fifth grade, when little “autograph books” were the rage. About 4x6”, they had colored pages on which your friends were to write their names and silly ditties, like “When you get old and think you're sweet, take off your shoes and smell your feet.” When I asked her to sign my autograph book, she graciously took it with a smile, then penned something I never anticipated:

I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in truth. --3 John 4 –Great Grandma Neely

I wish I still had that book, but in the purging of life and moves, I don't. But I do have another memento of her faith life: the tiny black pocket New Testament she gave me. I keep it by my recliner with other Bible materials, sometimes just to read favorite passages in the King James cadences. And when I do, I remember this bilingual, godly great grandmother, no stranger to sorrow and loss, who kept the embers of faith fresh through prayer and Bible study.

I was told that in her last days, dying from strokes at age 80, she struggled with words to tell a granddaughter caring for her that angels were just over the river, ready for her. And she was ready for them. As I have grown older, I wonder about the legacy I will have left when I die. Yes, I've had the privilege of writing books and articles, and of speaking to various groups. I raised two children to responsible adulthood (with the help of their remarkable dad). But what will really count, in the end, is whether I have left the legacy of children who “walk in truth.” I pray that will be so.

CATERPILLAR EYES

We have an ongoing private joke in our family about people who are obsessed with their appearance. Decades ago, for reasons we've forgotten, a visitor to our home went into great detail about the products she used for her hair. “My hair is very important to me,” she said, flipping her long locks. Since then, whenever my husband or I need to chide each other about vanity, we borrow that phrase, “My (fill in the blank) is very important to me.”

That inside-the-family joke came back to me recently when I was browsing the newspaper coupon inserts for products we might use. So many for hair color and makeup! But the one for an eye cosmetic made me think of another inside-the-family joke, about overdone eye makeup and false eyelashes which we call “caterpillar eyes.” You get the picture, I presume, with multiple black insect feet. This ad was for not one, but TWO products for “gorgeous eye looks.” One product was called the “lash blast amplify primer” and the other (to follow #1) the usual black sweep. Oh, “vegan” in origin, in case that concerns you.

A few days later the newspaper's entertainment insert featured the latest movie about a weird woman obsessed with Dalmatian dogs. You know the one: half of her hair black, the other white, and what we call (in the same jesting way) raccoon eyes. Yes, “Cruella.” Believe it or not, she's not an original. Probably an ancient, idol-worshiping queen named Jezebel was. Her story about challenging her prophets of Baal against Elijah's God took up quite a bit of space in 1 Kings 16-18. When her pagan priests “lost” the battle of the gods, she threatened to kill Elijah.

The rest of the story comes in 2 Kings 9 , fourteen years after her husband Ahab's death in battle. She wielded considerable influence over her son Jehoram, living in the palace. When war roared at the city's gates, she piled up her hair in the queenly fashion and painted her eyes with antimony, a metal we now know to be toxic but was prized for accenting one's eyes. The warrior who took the city, Jehu, wasn't impressed by Mrs. Raccoon Eyes, and she was killed. It gets gory from there, but the story is in 2 Kings 9:30-37.

As a product of the Depression and impoverished farm life, my mother didn't grow up with a lot of cosmetics savvy. Her motto would have been “A little powder and a little paint make a pretty little girl look like what she ain't.” She didn't have a chest of “war paint” in the bathroom drawers. She stretched out her tiny sample of lipstick from the door-to-door cosmetics salesperson as long as she could. Thus I grew up without a lot of makeup savvy and still am a minimalist. Maybe that's why I find double-duty eye makeup rather amusing. I still remember the day my teen daughter convinced me to have a “makeover” at a local cosmetics store. Oh, the array of products. I bought just a lipstick. As we got outside into the sunlight, my daughter turned to “painted”-me and said, “Mom, you look like a clown!”

I'm not against makeup and some of us need a lot of help! But I think the balance was expressed by a lady who was the opposite of Jezebel (and Cruella). The Bible calls her Mrs. Noble. She had a work ethic that went from sunrise to sundown. She raised kids who loved her. She didn't fret about the future and spoke with wisdom. Her husband said of her: “Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (Proverbs 31:30).

Yes, our cultures are thousands of years apart, but I think she would have put this whole cosmetics industry in perspective. Somehow, I don't see her viewing her world through caterpillar eyes.

(In thinking about cosmetics on Bible times, remember they didn't have handy bathing facilities to stay clean and, well, smell good. Thus perfumers and makers of cosmetics had essential businesses of their times. But there's a line where societal norms pass over to obsession. I think that's why the prophets mentioned overdone makeup in negative ways as symbols of national deterioration. Two more references on that: Jeremiah 4:30 and Ezekiel 23:40. None of the prophets wrote best-sellers, but they said what God felt needed to be said.)