TANGLED THREADS-2

Here are the promised pictures of the bobbin lace bookmark project! I hope you like them. I finished the project just about 2-3 days after I started it. Let me explain to you a few of the features of this bookmark. This will be a little bobbin lace lesson for you. I suppose this looks just like alot of tangled threads to most people, especially in the construction stages. Actually I have thought that myself when trying to work difficult patterns!

You will see that the body of the finished bookmark is about 5 inches long. This is very small indeed! On the second picture you see what look like "fans." These are called "fans"--surprise! They are made with whole stitches or cloth stitches. The area between the "fans" is called "ground." Various grounds can be worked in bobbin lace. One of the grounds shown here is "rose ground," (third diamond down from the top) a ground I am quite unfamiliar with working. It was a challenge to me. The "ground" is the little series of squares between the fans. The other section between the fans is called "spiders." If you can take a real good close-up look at these sections, you will see why the lace in this section is called spiders. The threads appear to form a body with eight legs! The top and bottom diamonds of ground are half-stitch ground--one of the simplest stitches, but a challenging ground for me for some reason. If you look really closely, you can see that I made mistakes! Oh, well; I'm self taught!

I told you there are some spiritual insights to be drawn from bobbin lace. What looks like a mess of tangled threads to most people can be made into something of exquisite beauty by the lacemaker. It reminds me of our lives. Many people have things in their pasts that make their entire life seem like "tangled threads." Threads of dysfunction, threads of excesses, threads of mistakes making miles upon miles of problems that seem to be tangled beyond repair. However, when a life of tangled threads is given to Christ, He is able to weave something beautiful out of the threads. He can take what was a real mess and create something worthwhile. You can put the threads of your life on His pattern (take a closer look at the pattern on my last post) and the results will soon begin. His pattern is outlined in the Bible. When you follow its instructions, you will reap good results. Just like the lace needs support from the pins until it is thoroughly woven, we too need support and encouragement in various ways as we live this life. It is an error to think you can "get saved" and then just go off your own way and never receive the support of daily Bible reading, the support of a church, or a relationship with the Lord through prayer. If the bobbin lace were not woven around pins, there would be no strength to it. The same stitches that are now beautiful and orderly would collapse on themselves and be shapeless.

If you are one of those people who feels their life is a mess of tangled threads, allow the Lord to begin His weaving process to produce an article of useful beauty! It's never too late and you're never too messed up for Him to recover! "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." 2 Corinthians 5:17 Blessings, LORI