Embroidery Lesson

Behold, I will do a new thing . . . (Isaiah 43:19a)

I learned to embroider when I was five years old. The doctor told me to stay in bed for a week, and Mother gave me a simple piece of embroidery to help me pass the time. Many pieces followed, and this began a long line of arts and crafts.

If you looked on the backside of an embroidered item, it would be a mess with threads running all over the place in  no discernible order. They are tangled and unattractive. But in the hands of a skillful needleworker, the front of the piece becomes a beautiful design,  showing position, pattern, and colors that work together to form a lovely image.

The Lord does the same with our lives. He takes the tangled mess we've made and makes something beautiful from it, one expert stitch at a time. He changes us and turns our lives inside-out so the best side shows -- the side that He sees because of Christ. The more we surrender to Him, the more of a masterpiece we'll become.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).

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