[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Saturday, December 28, 2013

[Paul]

Hello and good day to most of you on this Saturday, and a good Sunday morning to you in Australia and New Zealand as this is being written.  I hope that, by God's matchless grace and His providential care, that you all are doing well today.

The reason this Daily Thought message is a little early is because I'm going to our local Lutheran Outreach Center of the Blind here in Baltimore to take part in their annual Christmas celebration and to be a part of the gift exchange.  Since none of you will be there (though I wish you could be), I'll tell you what I'm bringing.  Instead of the stoneware dish I originally had planned to give, I'm bringing two CD's containing two sermons by my good friend Pastor Alan Campbell of Belfast, Northern Ireland.  Not only will they be less bulky than a stoneware dish, but it's the kind of gift that can be used over and over multiple times.  (Well, so can a stoneware dish for that matter).  Anyway looking forward to the gathering which will be held in conjunction with the congregation of the parent church, St. Thomas Lutheran, located in south Baltimore.

And now for the article at hand which is somewhat lengthy but I hope that most of you can get through it.  I strongly suspect that it originally appeared in a back December issue of "Guideposts" magazine, but I can't prove it.  Besides I've seen the author's name as the writer of many contributions which appeared in its pages.  The article in question is entitled "The Forgiving Quilt" by Roberta Messner of Huntington, West Virginia, and is rendered as follows:

Bulging red rubber tubs of decorations were scattered around the living room of my log cabin as I prepared for the holidays:  Christmas lights and ornaments for the tree, red and green candles for the windows, holly for the fireplace.  I'd wrestled the tree into its stand.  Now I needed a quilt to spread around the bottom for a skirt.

I went to the linen cupboard.  One quilt immediately caught my eye:  a hand-stitched antique.  Do I really want to put this on display? I thought as I pulled it out.  The one she gave me?

"She" was Mrs. Messner, my ex-husband's mother.  In 25 years of marriage, I never got comfortable enough with her to use her first name.  Our relationship was always tense, but then she did something I could never forgive her for.  Just looking at the quilt--hand-stitched by Mrs. Messner's mother--made me furious all over again.

Twenty years ago I was scheduled for a medical procedure that would take me away from home, and my husband was coming with me.  That meant we needed a babysitter for our beloved dog, Muffin.  "I've got a fenced-in yard where she can play," Mrs. Messner offered.

"You're sure you'll keep a close eye on her?" I asked.

"I promise," she said.

She promised, I thought angrily, shaking out the quilt.  For all that was worth.  Two days after we dropped Muffin off, Mrs. Messner called to report that our dog had gone missing.  Apparently, she hadn't been at Mrs. Messner's an hour before she slipped out of the yard and ran away.  She wasn't even wearing her collar, because I'd neglected to put it back on her after her bath.  Of all the terrible times for Muffin to have been without her collar!

I searched the neighborhood, going door-to-door with pictures of Muffin.  Mrs. Messner had put signs up:  LOST DOG $5 REWARD.  Five dollars! That was all Muffin was worth to her.  It infuriated me all these years later.

Weeks went by with no sign of Muffin, and I had to accept the fact that she was never coming back.  "Could you tell me what happened that day?" I asked Mrs. Messner.  "What was she doing when you last saw her? Do you have any idea how she got out of the yard? Did you forget to latch the gate?"

"Quit upsetting everybody about that dog, Roberta," she snapped.  "You've got me so worked up I'm getting hives.  Just go out an get yourself another dog." I was stunned.  Speechless.  Another dog? That was her solution? How could that woman be so cruel? Muffin didn't mean anything to her, and she didn't care what Muffin meant to me.  I got down on my knees and yanked the quilt around the tree.

Mrs. Messner's quilt was the perfect accent, but I couldn't appreciate it anymore.  All I could think about when I looked at it was my 20-year-old grudge.  I didn't need that at Christmas.  As I folded the quilt back up, a new thought popped into my head.  More like a command, really:  Give the quilt back to Mrs. Messner.

Where had such a crazy idea come from? I would have laughed if I wasn't so angry.  Why should I give Mrs. Messner anything? I stuck the quilt back in the linen cupboard and chose another for the tree skirt.

The quilt's a family heirloom.  Surely she'd like to have it back.  I couldn't quiet the voice in my head no matter what I did.  Since Mrs. Messner's mother had died, I supposed it made the quilt all the more special to those who loved her.  But giving it back would mean having to speak to Mrs. Messner.  I tried to imagine calling her.  What would I say?  I stared at the phone.

Wish her a blessed Christmas.  The voice was hard to abide.  So now I was not only supposed to do something nice, but say something nice, too? That was too much.  I vacuumed stray needles around the bottom of the tree.  I finished decorating and put away the empty tubs.  Thoughts of Mrs. Messner nagged at me.  I went back to the cupboard and took her quilt out again.  The Christmas lights illuminated the careful stitching, a perfect 12 to every inch.  A lot of love went into this quilt, I thought.  When Muffin disappeared, what hurt the most was thinking Mrs. Messner didn't care how much Muffin meant to me.  Was I doing the same thing with this quilt? It was made with a love Mrs. Messner could appreciate far more than I could.  And it was Christmas, after all.

I picked up the phone and dialed.  "Mrs. Messner?" I said when she answered.  "This is Roberta.  I was just admiring that lovely quilt your mother made.  The one you gave me."

I paused hopefully, but was met with silence on the other end of the phone.

"What do you need?" Mrs. Messner said.  Couldn't a single conversation with this woman be easy?

I took a deep breath and forged ahead.  "I was wondering," I said, "since your mother has passed on, if you would like to have the quilt back? The beautiful one she made."

Silence.  What more could I say? I'd done what I had to do.  I braced myself for another curt reply.  "Mrs. Messner, are you still there?"

"You can't know what this means to me, Roberta," she said.  "I don't own a single thing Mom made.  I would so love to have that quilt again." Mrs. Messner's voice had a sweetness in it that I had never heard before.

"I'll send it to you right away," I said.  I heard my own voice softening too when I wished her a merry Christmas.

I hung up feeling lighter, as if a weight had been lifted from my chest.  For the first time in 20 years I thought about Muffin without fuming over an unlatched gate, a paltry reward, and the dog collar I'd neglected to put back on.  Perhaps my bitterness at Mrs. Messner had been inflamed by my own guilty conscience.  I wrapped the quilt in tissue paper and wrote on a holiday card:  "Dear Mrs. Messner, Wishing you and your dear ones a blessed Christmas filled with nothing but love, Roberta."

I packaged up the quilt and tucked in the card.  I'd chosen one with an angel on it.  Because that was not just any voice in my head telling me to consider Mrs. Messner.  That was a Christmas angel speaking to my heart.  And I would never forget the gift she gave me.  The gift of forgiveness.

AFTERGLOW

Quilts have been part of American history from the very beginning.  In colonial times quilts were a practical way to keep warm.  With fabric so scarce, women stretched the little they had by sewing extra pieces together.  Few of these early quilts survive, and they were very different form quilts we know today.  The nineteenth century saw the creation of the Quilting Bee, a social gathering where local women got together to help their neighbor finish a quilt.  Pioneer women sometimes hung heavy quilts off the sides of their covered wagons for extra protection from Indian attacks.  Modern quilts, like Roberta Messner's, show off the quilter's creativity and skill.  And look beautiful too.  What a fine American tradition.

And I'm sure the same can be said of Canadian and New Zealand women.  In Australia, unless one lives in an area with the four seasons we know up here in the northern latitudes, I'm sure the same can also be said.  Hope you enjoyed this article, if you in fact read to the very end.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Lord willing, tomorrow there will be another Daily Thought message for you.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul