Repairer of the Seams Ezekiel 27

Ezekiel 27:26-27

Your rowers have brought you into great waters; the east wind has broken you in the heart of the seas. Your wealth, your wares, your merchandise, your sailors and your pilots, your repairer of seams, your dealers in merchandise and all your men of war who are in you, with all your company that is in your midst, will fall into the heart of the sea.

There is the reference to the repairer of seams in the NASB version. Other versions refer to shiprights and builders. But we will go with the repairer of seams. Also mentioned in 27: 9, the old men and the wise were repairing the seams in the boat or the sails, knowing that if the weak spots were not repaired, the whole thing was going down. And we all know that the same thing can happen with cloth.

There are 3 types of seam failures. I just finished repairing 2 antique quilts for a lady. They showed each types of failure. One form is where the stitching thread breaks. This is actually the easiest to repair. The thing holding the 2 pieces of cloth together breaks, but the fabric itself is not damaged. The line is usually obvious where the repair can be made. We just need another thread that will hold things together. These failures usually come because of stress on the seam when the quality of the thread is bad. Like our lives, we can have stresses that pull on the fabric of our lives. That which is not of God is weak and the strain makes us snap. The seam slowly begins opening up, and without repair, will continue to enlarge a hole in our lives. Sometimes other seams may have to be opened up to lay flat the one that needs to be repaired, and then the opened seam can be sewn shut and if done well, no one will ever see that there was ever a problem. God is like that. He can take the place of the old, brittle beliefs and notions of our lives and replace them with His strength when the things of the world cannot hold up. He can handle it. He might have to do some unsewing to fix the problem, but He can repair all of our holes.

Then there is the shallow seam. The thread was sewn too closely to the edge of the fabric and the stress placed on it causes the edge of the seam to unravel. This is a much more serious problem. That thread which is to hold things together is right and true, but misplaced. That quarter or 5/8 inch seam was not sewn correctly and leaves a weak spot which eventually can be breached. Sewing on the original line again will accomplish nothing.The solution here can be more tricky. If the seam was supposed to be deep, taking the regular seam around the weakness can solve the problem. But if the seam was narrow to start with, placing the original seam can be just as hazardous as it has just become a narrow seam like the one that unraveled. Whole pieces may have to be picked out and replaced, and then requilted. This process is far more time consuming, and unless you have kept pieces of the original fabric, it will be hard to make the piece look right. The patches may be obvious, but at least the quilt is still useful. We can be like this. We are inconsistent. We run life out of alignment and a little too close to the edge. And we fray and unravel. If this is an occasional problem, the repairs are sometimes easy and sometimes obvious, but we can be fixed and used. If the seam was consistently shallow, there is nothing that can be done to strengthen the seams. Some fabric may be able to be salvaged and used in another quilt, but this piece is only good for sitting around. Any stress will pull it apart. Repairs are futile.

And then there is the worst failure. That of rot. These quilts were from close to the turn of the century, and there is a characteristic of most quilts from that era. The black fabric disintegrates. It rots away. There are parts of it there, or there are shapes that show that there was fabric there once, but it is gone now. The batting is exposed, the fabrics around it make it obvious that something was supposed to be there, was once there, and has not held up over time. If there was little of the offending fabric in the overall quilt, new patches can be appliqued into place. Sometimes old fabric can be salvaged from another quilt or fabric collection, but more often than not we don't have that available. Reproductions or close matches can be put into the holes. But if enough of the quilt was made with fabrics that were inherently flawed, like the chemicals used to dye fabric black back then, the quilt will become worthless and unrepairable. It might be set aside sadly, folded as a memory, but it will not be able to be used for its intended purpose. But if there were only a few pieces used, the holes can be filled with time and different fabric and a lot of patience.

These quilts were examples of that. One's edges had been used and abused to the point that I had to cut a whole row of blocks off and rebind it. The center of the quilt, away from the edges, was in quite good shape. The other seams and patches that had worn down were patched. Seams were repaired. Useable fabric from the cut off portion was salvaged from the cut off edge and used to replace rotted or abused spots in the quilt. With the new binding, that quilt became useable again. The second one had more of a disintegration problem. There was need for far more patching, more applique over rotting pieces. The edges had to be rebound as well, but the quality and age of the fabric showed that it was not original to the quilt. There were far more narrow seams where the patches frayed. It was a work that I wanted to save, but the more I patched, the more I realized just how fragile this work was. It was returned to the owner with a note that this piece had to be handled with care not not hung up or used. It was just for show and memories. There were seams that couldn't be patched, but were not serious enough to deal with or were so tenuous that working on them would probably cause more harm. I really began wondering if it was worth my time and her money to have taken this second piece on. And that is how it is with some broken lives. We question God for investing in them when it seems He will get no real reward for all of His trouble.

But that is our God. He looks fondly on we old quilts and though the world puts no earthly value into us (when you look for value of quilts of that era, they are worth little to nothing on today's market), He sees us as precious, as worth it. He paid for us with the blood of His Son, washed us up, patched our fragile, worn and torn seams and patches, and either uses us or puts us on display as examples of His extreme mercy. And for that, we well up in extreme gratefulness. We will be damaged by this life, but God is our good repairer of the seams, wise in His dealing with us, knowing where we need reseamed, patched, places covered over, or parts cut off to stop the bleeding. He then knows where to put us to display His glory. It may be on the bed, on the wall, or in a case or closet, but we are His precious treasure. And we need to love each other, repairs and all, as fellow possessions of the King. We need not judge each other's frailties...we have enough of our own. Some of our repairs don't show up to those who see us, but we know that we are just as likely to come to need for repair because of what we were originally made of, who sewed us together in the first place, and how closely we were quilted. The workmanship we received was not of our own doing. Pride is foolish as we did not make ourselves. But our Master Repairer mends us all when the use and abuse of life takes its toll.