Covering Others in Love

My mother was a quilter. I say was because ever since a stroke almost 13 years ago, she hasn’t sewn. I still haven’t adjusted to her lack of a project. Sometimes it was clothes, sometimes dolls or stuffed animals, but always, even if set aside for a few weeks, it was quilts.

When I was growing up, Mom and her closest friend, Frieda, got together often for quilting parties. Sometimes they shared patterns or ideas or new methods of quilting. Sometimes they cut squares from donated fabrics for future projects. And, twice a year, they gathered with other church ladies for a quilting bee in the church basement. These were always a big deal, encompassing hours of needlework, quarts of coffee, and lunch served from the fellowship hall kitchen counter. There were often cookies, too, for small preschoolers like me.

I played beneath the quilt-covered quilting frame in the world’s best fort, sometimes sneaking through legs to fetch a new toy or picture book from the nursery. I laid on my back atop a blanket on the hard concrete and watched the ladies’ needles poking in and out, leaving small dots of color on the otherwise white backing. I helped untangle knots or fetched a stray skein of yarn or a dropped thimble or pin. It was dim under there from the thickly-quilted roof and the double-knit-clad legs of the ladies. 

I liked listening to the ladies talk. They tended to forget about the little girl with big ears beneath the quilt. But my mom never forgot. Sometimes, just when the conversation got interesting, everything suddenly went quiet and I knew Mom had reminded them of my presence with a cock of her head or an elbow in the ribs. They weren’t terrible gossipers, but, you know, adults talk and children listen, and sometimes the two oughtn’t to match up.

As the day wore on and the women’s arms stretched as far as they could reach, they rolled the frames smaller. This shrank my play area and my patience. By that point in the day, I didn’t understand why making quilts mattered so much. Why giving time to such things should be a priority.

How could I, as a young child, understand? The adults, however, saw the end-goal. And so they worked, giving hours and aching backs to making quilts (and dolls and stuffed animals) so those in need could find comfort and warmth and, hopefully, prayerfully, love.

The day after the quilting bees, at Sunday morning worship, the quilts were piled high near the pulpit, dolls and stuffed animals interspersed, and the pastor would dedicate the items to the Lord. Each quilt, each toy, was given to God with the prayer that whoever received the item would also receive the love of God.

That’s why those ladies did what they did. Every quilt, every doll they stitched was sewn to glorify God. Like Dorcas in the Bible—that memorably-named woman known for always doing good and helping the poor (Acts 9:36, NIV)—they used their talents to the glory of God so that others could know Him and experience His love.

Though I didn’t understand it then, the memories of those women working, and the examples they set, instilled in me an ethic to give unto others. I give back through volunteering, through my words (mostly written), sometimes through cooking and baking meals for friends in tough times, rather than via my needlework. How do you give back? What gifts has God given you to use for Him? God has called us to generosity. It’s up to us to figure out how to show that to the world.

Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.  In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life (I Timothy 6:18,19, NIV).