Lorilylee made this beautiful quilt for me for Christmas! 
Merry Christmas!
Here is a photo of what I have sewn so far for the first week of the Advent mystery quilt at the Quilters Neighborhood.I moved the blocks around to try to find some semblance of a pattern. 
We are studying Martha this week in the Women of the Bible online study and Mary, her sister, next week.
I have been thinking a lot about service and the bad state that the Martha in the book of Luke and
I can imagine the whole thing because I know what it is like when I have been the one spinning around the kitchen trying to get things done. I have so been there :trying to serve my family or my friends and I know how it feels when I hae started to get tired and I have felt the bitterness in my spirit and the wonder at why no one is helping me the way that I have thought that I ought to be helped…
However, I have had these thoughts or very nearly these thoughts at times about other church related service before. Replace the word “sew” with words like work, sweep, cook, clean, wash, host, scrub, etc… and well…you know…
I realized my mistake almost immediately.
Within moments of standing near the table, I became aware that she was doing a job that had totally and thoroughly exhausted her. I was told in her first breath that she had been doing this particular job for years. In the next breathe; I heard a list of all the people who benefited from the job she did. Then I heard about how those very people who benefited from her work had not ever helped her with it. When I asked her why she had done the job alone and why no one ever helped her with it she replied coldly that in previous years there had been a few people who had tried to help her but the most that she had ever received from their help was a bad headache.
“I prefer to work alone,” she said finally, looking over her spectacles with a cold, hard stare.
At that, I took the hint, turned tail swiftly and breaking into a near run, I moved quickly to a different part of the church building.
Reflecting back on all this today, I just wonder at how this might have happened to her.
Had she started doing this job those many years ago with a joyful heart, anticipating the good that she would do?
When did things go so terribly wrong for her and why?
Could this be a picture of me down the road?
Will I act like this sometime in the future?
Being a woman who does not like to make people unhappy, I have trouble saying “NO!”
“Sure, Sure, O.k.,sure, I can do that, sure…” is generally the given answer. Out of obligation sometimes, I say “Yes!” but I do like to help at other times.
This could explain my aversion to answering the telephone!
I just have not ever really considered that my inability to say “NO, that’s enough.” could be a sin.
That there is such a thing as the sin of doing a job that I should not be doing.
To think that I could potentially hurt people if that bitterness came out of me as it came out of that lady at church last Sunday. That would be a sin!
Ephesians 2:8 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. “
Titus 3:5 “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,”
And of course what Jesus said to Martha in Luke 10 is important to consider also:
Verse 41-42 “And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”
He said there is only one thing is needed. What is it? Maybe just “look and listen” or “listen and look” are faith at work and are enough to “do” sometimes.
The verses that we studied at a bible study recently came to mind:
Numbers 21:8 “Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent, and put it on a pole; and so it was, if a serpent had bitten anyone, when he looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.”
Jesus said in
In this case Moses was given some specific jobs to do. God told him to “Make”, “Set”, and “Lift”…
The rest of the Israelites (who had been "bitterly complaining" by the way) were told to “Look” at the snake on the pole just as we are told to “Look” to Jesus and be healed. That's all they were told to do...That's all that we are told to do...
Maybe if God tells us to do something we had better get busy with it! Maybe if God has not told us to do something then we better high tail away from there saying “No!” as we go…
I don’t have a complete answer for the dilemma of church service or for the unhappy church lady either. It is God’s church after all. He will "work" it all out and finish the work too, right?
What I do know is that I want to do what the Lord wants me to do and I do not want to do what the Lord does not want me to do. I think that means that for now, I am going to keep sewing for gifts and charitable causes that interest me and I’m going to do the jobs at church that I am excited about. I think that if God gives me a desire to do something then He is “Making it a good work as I continue to be His workmanship.” I also know that if I ever start to act like that lady at church and start getting a headache because someone is or isn’t helping me with the job I chose to do, than I hope that someone will stop at my table, or sink or wherever I'm working and I’ll remember the events of last Sunday before they run away.
Yesterday I put all the blocks out for the Women of the Bible quilt that I have made so far.
We had a really wonderful time visiting with my family at the Oregon Coast. The shady trees photo was taken while visiting Ft. Clatsop. The National park was very beautiful and I think one of my favorite stopping places during our week out there. The Park Rangers were dressed up in Lewis and Clark period costumes and we had fun talking to them as they whittled. One of the Rangers did a shooting demonstration and shot a musket for us. The hike was lovely down to the Lewis and Clark River.
This is one of the first quilt squares that I made for my version of the Jane Stickle quilt that she called "In War Time" in 1863.
