In Need Of Mending
The dress is royal blue with tiny little,white-and-yellow flowers. Cute buttons run down the front. A strap goes over each shoulder. And a skirt fans out down to the knees. Made for the summer season.Perfect for a bright-eyed, one-year-old girl, who stands just a couple feet tall.Picked out for her by her aunt, on arecent trip to Guatemala.
For one reason or another, two little buttons didn’t survive a single day’s wearing on my active little daughter. She may have picked at them or got them caught. Or perhaps the buttons themselves decided to ‘jump dress’. Either way, the stray buttons and the lovely dress ended up on my to-do list.
Before I left home for college, my mother determined that I needed to know the basics of sewing. This included button repair. Select the thread. Place a knot in the end. Thread the needle. Be careful about placement – line it up with the button hole. Then, into the clothing and through the button. Pull tight, but not too tight. Back through another hole on the button. In and out, up and down. Vary the pattern. Slip the needle underneath some thread that’s already sewn on. And when satisfied, tuck the end and cut the thread. At least that’s how I remember it.
So I assured my wife that I could handle this little button project, and I got out my sewing kit…the same one I packed for college. It’s just a little square plastic container with an assortment of threads on spools, an old pill bottle with some needles inside, and a foldable sewing scissors.
I slowly placed the knot in the end of the hair-thin thread, even though my fingers felt way too large. Getting the thread through the eye of the needle was the part that tried my patience the most. My eyes and my fingertips had trouble communicating. And the thread didn’t always behave; the end would split. Such careful, detailed work it is to thread and to sew. And I’ll admit that I’m quite out of practice. That little sewing kit just might last me my entire lifetime. I do my best to keep my buttons in place.
Still…no matter how hard we try…buttons will pop off…off our clothes and off of our lives. We wind up like my daughter’s blue dress – beautiful, but not quite right, not completely whole. Sometimes we’re the cause of the fracture. Other times the brokenness finds us. And we end up in need of mending. Everyone of us.
Stop and consider for a moment. How do you need mending in your life? Is it in your body, your mind, your spirit? How are your relationships? Your finances?Maybe your hopes need healing, or your attitude for life needs repair. What in your life has fallen off?
We can be thankful that God has long ago put us on God’s to-do list. God’s sewing kit is far larger than the little container I have, and it’s never out of supplies. Neither is God out of practice with mending broken people. Although God doesn’t delay in getting to work, still the mending can take time. And we surely try God’s patience. In the process we don’t always behave as God would have us; we have split ends. And to boot, it’s delicate material God is working with…fragile souls and complex lives.
Nonetheless, we are in the best of hands with our Healer-Tailor God, hands that we can trust, hands that can handle us and whatever repair we need.
By the way, my daughter’s dress is good as new. There’s hope for you and me yet.
A Fellow Mend-In-Progress,
All are invited to a Community Service of Healing at St. John’s on Saturday, September 10, at 5:00pm. Invite anyone you know who needs the mending power of God.