When I thought about sewing my purple stoles, I thought of all the usual things people include. There were designs with various crosses, candles, the mother and child, and of course the scene at Bethlehem. None of these quite spoke to me and my sense of calling to ministry.
You see, one of the most significant ideas about both Advent and Lent, is that both are about God entering into the messiness of human life. So, I used the randomness of the “crazy quilt” design to reflect on this messiness.
And life is certainly messy! We might have all our plans laid out, but in the end stuff happens and it is not always what we planned. We travel through the good times and bad. There are often times that I call “an interesting learning experience,” though usually it was not a learning experience that I wanted in my life.
But why I sewed my stole in this way is that in the midst of all this messiness, God is present. There is nothing that we can encounter that is outside of God’s presence.
And so we have hope.
