Changing The Pattern

        I am a quilter, when time allows. It's a great time to sit quietly and commune with God, enjoy beautiful music, or even the outdoors.  I enjoy leafing through all my quilt books looking for the quilt pattern I’d like to make next.  I’m often amazed at how different a quilt can look when you change one shape in the block, change colors or when you rearrange the pieces.  With each change, you have the potential to make a whole new quilt!  The possibilities seem endless!

This change can even be seen on area barns in a variety of states across the nation.  In East Tennessee the Appalachian Quilt Trail, displays barns that have a beautiful quilt patch, painted in vibrant colors, adorning some part of the exterior barns along this trail.  These pieces, when displayed separately, offer a distinct pattern visible because of the colors.  If all the patches were put together, it would be an amazing array of colors, in a range of shapes that would be an incredibly beautiful quilt!

This same principle can be applied to our lives.  Each behavior we display can be a color.  When the colors complement each other, because God is in our lives, guiding and “growing” us into the person we are meant to be, others can easily see the defining lines.  

In a practical application, this switching of colors or shapes in our lives can be visible when we exchange a bad habit for a good one.  In this change, we could visualize we’ve changed a “shape.”  When we change a from sinful lifestyle to a Christian lifestyle, we can imagine it being a changed a “color.”   When we fellowship with Christians, instead of those who would lead us down a sinful road, we have “rearranged the pieces” in the block.  The total of all these changes has the potential to create a “new person” in Christ, when our heart is in tune with God.

We are told not to conform to the patterns of the world but to be transformed.  (See Romans 12:1-20  This transformation may take time.  With the “renewing of our minds” through reading God’s word, communing with The Father, listening to Gospel music, and studying with other Believers the transformation comes in each of us, just as the quilt changes when we change colors and rearrange pieces of the block.  Our potential for possibilities, like the quilt, becomes endless!  

I encourage you to look at your life as if it were a beautiful quilt block.  Do you like what you see? Imagine what your “colors” and “shapes” are telling those around you.  Are there colors or even “shades” that need changing?   Are people seeing a God filled human, who chooses to make right and good decisions, rather than conforming to all the varying “obsessions” the world provides or are there patterns that may need changing?