“There is not enough time for that!” “Time is money.” “Time waits for no one.” “I wish I had more time…” If you have ever taken a timed test, I am sure you have thought the last one! Time is such a strange concept. We worry about how much time we have, and we “waste” time just thinking about time! Time is deep within our every day vocabulary that we don’t even notice it sometimes. The Teacher in Ecclesiastes wrote the beautiful excerpt above about there being a time for everything. As quilters, we know all to well about a time to tear, and a time to sew!
It is never too early (or too late) to continue working on a Christmas project! These pictures are the table topper I started in December, and ran out of time to complete before Christmas. I am using it as a practice piece to get better with my new machine. Below is a time lapsed video of me free motion quilting the points of my Dashing Star. It is a feather style with pebbles running down the vine. I wanted to have a design that made the two triangles that make up one point in the star come together. I am also working on a new technique that “buries” the starting and finishing threads. What you can’t see in a time lapse video is some of the mistakes I made!
It is not the Christmas season, but we are coming up on Easter! The Teacher says, “for everything there is a season.” We see this beautifully represented in Jesus’ life. Christmas season is the celebration of his birth. We then see, in the Gospels, Jesus’ season of teaching, and Easter is the celebration of the season of death and then, thankfully, life! We all go through different seasons. Whether your season is a time of prosperity, trials, or somewhere in between, it is always the time for us to come to God in thankfulness and faith. God does not promise us a certain amount of time on Earth, and He definitely doesn’t tell us how much we have left! So, if we cannot control the timing, why do we worry so much about it?
There are plenty of excuses, but maybe the most likely answer is that we lack a little faith in God’s time table. Psalm 90:12 says, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Let us value each day as the unique gift that it is for we do not know what tomorrow brings. (Proverbs 27:1) If you are anything like me, you might hear yourself say, “I just don’t have enough time!” We certainly can’t control every minute of our day! But if I take a minute to reflect on my day, I realize I spent at least 10 minutes on my phone doing nothing, more than that time stressing about x, y, and z, and a lot of other minutes not focused on anything. What could I accomplish if I set aside 15 minutes dedicate to something?
We need rest in our daily lives. I am NOT saying that we always need to be busy doing something, so we don’t “waste” the precious time that we have. I have fallen into this way of thinking before, and it is exhausting. Rest is nature’s beautiful way of showing us our dependence on God. I want to encourage us to think about what we desire to accomplish with our time, and what is stopping us from accomplishing it. I don’t give myself enough time to accomplish what matters to me, and instead spend that time on an unrelated task. How much would we get done if we set aside just 15 minutes a day to devote to that one thing we love, but always seems to put on the back burner, because life gets in the way? Join me in the month of March, in spending 15 minutes a day on this one goal. I will be spending that time allowing myself to be creative in my sewing room, and making progress on a wedding quilt. Maybe it is time to pull out that UFO!
Ecclesiastes is a very deep and complicated book about time and the “meaningless” of our lives. It definitely is too complicated for me to do it justice in this post, so I encourage you to read it, and contemplate its wisdom. The bible project also has an amazing video to help you understand Ecclesiastes that I highly encourage you watch! Looking forward to seeing what you accomplish this month! Happy quilting!
Quilt Bus 