I enjoy the art of hand embroidery. It is a favorite hobby of mine. I love the challenge of pulling together stitch after stitch of various colors to create beauty.

The work can be tedious and I must admit I do as much unstitching as I do stitching in order to make sure all of the stitches are uniform in shape. If a stitch is not the right length, if it is angled incorrectly or if it’s not tight enough to lay flat unstitching must be done.

It takes time, persistence and practice to master the skill of hand embroidery. You don’t become a master of the craft overnight and even the most skilled stitchers still make mistakes.

Hand embroidery is much like our Christian walk with Christ. When we start out we don’t know everything about God and His word overnight. It takes time spent in His word and time learning about His word to grow in our knowledge of Christ and God’s ways.

If we are persistent in our Christian walk we will keep “stitching “ even when we have set backs. When doing embroidery often we make a mistake and have to remove a stitch and redo it.

In our Christian walk we will make mistakes because we are human. We will sin, we will fail but we unstitch that sin by confessing it to God. We ask for forgiveness resolving in our hearts not to keep sinning (1 John 1:19). When we have “unstitched” the fail we don’t stop stitching; “NO,” we dust ourselves off and keep on serving Jesus just like Peter did.

Peter failed Jesus not just one time but three times before the rooster crowed (Mark 16:66-72). Afterwards Peter wept bitterly with remorse and grief for his fail, but he did not stay wallowing in condemnation. He met up with the disciples, had a life encounter with Jesus and then was later filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 4:8-12). Peter kept on stitching!

The more we practice the word of God in our daily life the stronger and more “skilled” we will grow in faith, hope and the joy of the Lord.

Does this mean we will never have a fail? No, but because we have spent time in the word, been persistent in our determination to keep serving God and our practice of God’s word; we will know by faith we can trust God because we have seen Him restitch and put our life back together so many times we have no doubt we can trust Him.

We may not be able to hold a colorfully stitched cloth work of art in our hands at the end of our life, but if we have lived God’s word there will be beautiful souls touched and delivered by Christ through the stitches of our faithfulness and love.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!