Warming Up to You

So we are to work with eager hands, to be a merchant ship, bringing in the goods to benefit our families, and to enjoy the process. This whole idea is expanded in Proverbs 31. I am a quilter...well, more of a flimsy maker – a topper, if you will. Did you know quilting is in the scriptures? Right there in 31: 22. She makes coverings for her bed...the New Living Translation says it outright...she quilts her own bedspreads! It says a few verses ahead of that that she does not fear the cold...it means her family is warm with her work...the clothes, the bedspreads, the work of the spindle and distaff...this gal not only sewed the stuff together, she made her own fabric! The time, the love, the commitment to do all of that work, what must have seemed like labor, all to provide for the basic need of life – warmth. The scriptures stated that a man must not have his mantel taken from him...those wraps that would keep him from being cold in the night, and without which he may not survive. Warmth...we think of it in terms of a cozy fire, or happy feelings toward another...but I have learned through my dear daughter that warmth is a basic need.

She is in India right now...in a town in the foothills of the Himalayas, working at a school and home for boys who have no families, or whose families can't care for them. The buildings are built to shed heat, for most of the year it is too hot and very humid. But now it is winter...it still gets warm during the day...70s or so, but the nights are now COLD. 40s. She has learned that she needs warmth. She is in the building, but there is no heat (or air for those hot days). This is the atmosphere most of the world lives in...and we feel all righteous about turning the thermostat down at night to save money!

Warmth...we need it...and so do others around us. Even my daughter has shelter, but she sees the people who are sleeping in the streets. She sees them wrapped in their rags, trying to keep warm.

So the point...are we able to warm ourselves, our families, and our world? To what end are we using all this fabric that God has lovingly bestowed on us? Are we just warming their outsides? What about their inner person, their very soul? Are we cold toward the people around us, or do we hold out the warmth of a loving hand? Are we breath and life to them? There is no such thing as a cold breath. The little puffs that appear when the weather is really cold tells us that we are warm inside, but would anyone notice it if we were not forced to breathe out?

I did not grow up warm...inside or out. I froze all the time. I huddled up with tons of blankets and curled into my little ball in my bedroom, breathing under the sheets to add heat under those blankets as fast as I could. My outer life was much the same. I was cold. I had no idea how to live myself, let alone give life to others. I was miserable and made others miserable. Then the warmth of God's Spirit did His work, melted my frozen heart, and allowed me to in turn spread some of that warmth around. I still am not a furnace, by any stretch of the imagination. But the cold is gone. The fire may subside and need new wood piled on, but the embers are still warm enough underneath to get the blaze going again.

I really have to work at warmth. The natural tendency is to want to get it more than to radiate it out to others...may His glow of warmth and welcome emanate from His people, you and I, to bring warmth into this natural cold and selfish world. And if sewing on a quilt top or cuddling under a blanket can remind me of that, all the better. I will have the daily reminder in my sewing room all year round. And then I get the gift of giving out the finished product to warm others.