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.