But God...

(First, if you are visiting here for the first time today, I have a little giveaway from Saturday's post, so check that out if you are interested.  Also, I'll be back to sewing/quilting/crafty stuff tomorrow, but I'm setting aside Mondays to share a little from the Bible.  If you want to read it, great!  If you are just wanting to check out another sewing blog, come back tomorrow and I'll be talking about something new I'm learning.  Anyway, Welcome!)


 I think one of my favorite phrases to read in the Bible is "But God..."

And I think one of my favorite "But God" verses is Romans 5:8

"But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

Ok, here's the part of the blog where I admit that I read and saw "The Hunger Games".  While there are a number of things that are not okay about the book/movie, there was a scene that caused me to stop and consider a different scenario.  If you haven't read or seen, don't worry, I'm not spoiling anything.  So the scene is that Katniss has a sister she loves and there is to be a kind of lottery drawing in her district for a young girl and a young boy to be chosen to basically go get killed by their peers.  Statistically, the odds are low for Katniss's sister to be chosen, but she is.  Her name is called and Katniss is in shock, but responds quickly, volunteering to take her sister's place.  It is an act of self sacrifice and love because she knows that she is most likely going to her death.

That's the scenario in the book.  I made up a new scenario in my mind.  It goes like this:  Katniss knows a girl in her neighborhood.  This girl has mocked, teased, mistreated, and spread lies about Katniss on a regular basis.  She is her enemy.  Now it's time for the lottery.  All are gathered.  The name of Katniss's enemy is called.  How does she respond?  I wonder how I would respond.  How would you respond?  If I'm keeping with the character of Katniss in the book, she probably would breathe a sigh of relief and sadly, I probably would too.  This is the way people love.  We love those who love us.  We love good people.  We love people who say nice things.

But God...

This is not how God loves.  His love is so different from ours.  He volunteered to die for his enemies even as they hated Him. I'm going to give you the rest of this section of Scripture.

"For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.  But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.  For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.  And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation."

I'm so thankful that God doesn't love like I do.

My First Blog Post!

I’ve caved.  I kept saying “Maybe I’ll start a blog.”  I learned how to make a quilt from my mother-in-law about two and a half years ago (Thanks, Jo Ellen!)

My first quilt!

Then I discovered the modern quilt movement through various wonderful blogs.  (I'll be adding a list of my favorites to the right side of my blog, but I want to ask their permission first.)  I started thinking it might be fun to have one of my own, but I was a newbie who knew nothing.  No blog.  Then about a year later, I found the Des Moines Modern Quilt Guild (Hi guys!) where I met several wonderful ladies with like interests and some of them had blogs.  (If you click through to the DSMQG, you can see some of the things we're doing and learn more about modern quilting if you are unfamiliar with it.  And if you want to join, we'd love to have you!)
I considered blogging again, but still felt like I was new to this whole thing.  Then I found the amazing things being posted on Flickr and saw even more of the modern quilting community and met even more great people.  Still, no blog.  So what made me finally cave?  Well, for one, a couple weeks ago I was elected as the president of the Des Moines Modern Quilt Guild.   It seems that the president of a modern quilt guild should have a blog, right?  And the other thing is that in February I’m going to Quiltcon in Austin. Yay! And I figured if I have a blog, maybe some other people going to Quiltcon can get to know me a bit and we could meet up!  And then my husband said “Start a blog!” So I did.

So…this blog will mostly be about sewing/quilting/crafting.

Some things I've made

1. Mug rug I made for Crystal, 2. Mug rug backup, 3. Mouthy Stitches 2 Tote - side A, 4. Alot of stitches, 5. Little Stitches journal cover, 6. So very British:), 7. Nursery Versery skirt and onesie, 8. Meadow Pillow, 9. Medallion quilt, 10. Stargazing block, 11. Star Blossom English paper piecing, 12. Hexagon tree tote, 13. Walk in the Woods pinwheel quilt, 14. QuiltCon Block Submission #3, 15. QuiltCon block submission, 16. Quilt for Finneas Foxe


But I don’t like putting out something that’s important to me without saying anything about what is really most important to me.  So I won’t be blogging on Sundays because that’s time for God.  And on Mondays I plan to be sharing a little bit from the Bible.

The rest of the week I have plans for showing you my works in progress, sewing techniques I’ve learned or am learning or want to learn.  Sometimes maybe I’ll post a funny video or picture or something because I enjoy a good laugh.  I’m also thinking of sharing some of my favorite fabrics, flickr pics, maybe some sales I’ve found, and perhaps the occasional giveaway!

Like maybe now!  If you made it this far reading my first post, congratulations!  I’m going to give away a fat quarter of Echino Decoro Buck to one of you.

Tell me what thing I mentioned I’ll be doing on my blog that you would like to read about the most and I'll enter you in a drawing to win.  I'll announce the winner on Friday!

Okay, first blog post written!