In the early days of the pandemic, I started making masks.
I didn’t go to the fabric store—we were sheltering in place. Instead, I descended into the basement, and emerged with fabric my grandmothers saved for decades. When I ironed the vintage florals, the steam carried the scents of their houses, their closets and attics, and it made me think about my place in the history—my connection to those who went before me, and those who will come after.
Both of my grandmothers sewed; now, in my basement, I have cross-stitch patterns they began and didn’t finish. Floral remnants in long strips only seven inches wide. Pieces cut for a quilt that was never quilted. A wooden basket that unfolds to reveal compartments filled with buttons, clasps, bits of elastic, pins, thimbles, and needles. When I taught my daughter how to make a mask, she used some 50-year-old underwear elastic she found in this box to make ear straps.
I use a sewing machine the same age as I am, given to me by the great-aunt who originally taught me to sew. She’s near ninety, now, and used to pray when she sewed. I reflect on her long hours of repetitive seams and prayers as I sew. I feel like I’m joining in her tradition when I use the machine.
There is a crafter outside of Chicago who believes that when she finds unfinished pieces of needlework at estate sales, she ought to buy them and finish them. Typically, these are just small cross-stitch and needlepoint pieces, but a couple of years ago at an estate sale, she found an enormous, unfinished embroidery and quilting project that was of a United States map. According to the Washington Post (this story was reported all over the place), she said, “I knew I had to buy it and finish it,” and added that “it would be a huge undertaking and she doesn’t know how to quilt.” She asked on Instagram if anyone wanted to help her complete it, and over a thousand people replied. She chose a hundred and mailed pieces out to them. The quilt was completed about six weeks later.
As my daughter and I make masks out of fabric handed down from my grandmothers, I think of those hundred people, working together across a great distance of time and space to make something beautiful—to finish something unfinished—as a kind of communion of the saints, as a great cloud of witnesses. I think of it as a kind of picture of what Christians are doing in the church right now, as we continue the work our ancestors started, and as we hope that those who come after us will carry it on until God’s kingdom comes in its fullness to earth.
Of course, we don’t always use our resources to build something beautiful and good.
When God led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness, and to Mt. Sinai, Moses disappeared into a cloud on the mountaintop for forty days. The people got restless, and they pooled their resources to make a golden calf that they could worship.
When Moses finally came down from the mountaintop carrying a word from God for the people, he saw them worshipping an idol, and he threw God’s law to the ground and destroyed the golden calf.
Moses asked God to give them another chance, and he went back up on Mt Sinai and received God’s law again.
This time, when he comes down, he gathers the community to listen to God’s law, and he invites them to work together to build a tabernacle—a dwelling place for the Spirit of God. And as their hearts move them, they bring donations of whatever they have—their heirlooms. Their jewelry. Their best linens. The things they’d saved and carried from one land to another. And they bring their talents, too — they sew and dye fabric, they melt precious metals, they hammer and nail. They work together with what they have to make something for God.
As we emerge in a new, post-pandemic world, I think God invites us to bring what we have. Whatever we’ve inherited—from our families, from this nation, from the church—our scraps of fabric and our most treasured possessions—our histories, whether we’re proud of them or not, whether they involve golden-calf worship or not—our faith—and to offer it all to God.
God invites us to work together with the cloud of witnesses, the communion of the saints who’ve gone before us, to make something beautiful—to find new ways to reveal God’s presence dwelling among us in this particular, fraught, moment in time. To find that our gifts may need to be used in new ways—clothes turned into quilts, unfinished projects divided up and conquered, scraps turned into masks, underwear elastic circling our ears, not our waists—because loving God and loving our neighbors looks a little different now than it used to.
And perhaps when we join together in obedience to God, God will make a path through this wilderness for us, and God will dwell with us as we walk it.
—Written by Amy Peterson. Used by permission from the author.
13 Responses
Blessings others with our gifts of material things or talents to help our brothers and sisters in the times we live in is fantastic!
Very well put and said. Thank you!
Absolutely beautiful! Thank you
This was beautiful! Thanks for sharing. It made me think of the scriptures in 1 Cor 12, where it speaks to being one body with many parts. As we each contribute and use the gifts of God then a shift and change can happen in our world.
Praise God!
Thank you for sharing this wonderful message, I shall forward it, God has a plan for us. Thanks be to the Lord….Praise, Honor and Glory to His Holy Name. Amen 🙏❤️
Praise the Lord for your word of truth. What God has for you to share in this life. I found my love and dedication for children and people. I get still and know He is God of every good and perfect thing. I may not like it but I know it is for my good. I am available to serve however God sees to use me. Here I am Lord, send me and I shall go. I ask Him to lead me in the way I should go. I believe He will go with me. He will set the stage I am to be a willing servant. I am responsible to do my part as unto the Lord. I pray my children and generations will see my work for the Lord and listen for their call.
It makes me realize there are still a lot of good and caring people in our country and in the world. It was an uplifting article to read.
Thank you, Amy Peterson, for this very inspiring article.
This touched my heart so much! My mother taught me to sew when I was very young and I always loved it. I made most everything my two daughters wore when they were babies and up until they didn’t want to wear homemade dresses anymore. I miss that time. The pandemic changed our lives in many ways and this writer touched on it beautifully. I believe God wants us to join together in obedience and prayer to reunite this country and world as if our lives depend on it, and they do!
Wow, great write…so much to think about! Thank you!
Absolutely loved this article…..coming out of covid with a new perspective !!!
I feel this too Amy! His presence in me and in others motivates me to do what Jesus told us to do—become a servant among men. The pandemic interrupted my natural life but it sure made me grow up fast in my spiritual life!