A group of devoted seamstresses meets faithfully each week to make masterpieces for those in need. If you had asked them five years ago what their gift or talent was, they would have shrugged and said, "I don’t guess I have one." Now, they would humbly reply, "Binding human hearts together with threads of love." They felt unlikely and even unworthy to be chosen by God—the greatest creator of masterpieces, but they consider their ministry a true act of worship.
Raymond Baptist Church has always been blessed with women who give of themselves to meet the physical needs of those around them. That desire to serve others was the foundation on which the "Piecemakers" built their ministry. In the beginning, their main focus was creating lap quilts for the shut-ins in our community. They would make and deliver the quilts along with a homemade treat. Hearts were touched and testimonies from those receiving the quilts poured in. Another facet of this ministry was making baby quilts for the new babies in our congregation. This act of kindness will stand through the years as a symbol of love and compassion bestowed upon the infant.
When God led the "Piecemakers" to go beyond our community with this ministry, the excitement built and several more women joined the endeavor. The group donates a quilt to the family being assisted during our annual church mission project. Even if they do not use it at the time they receive it, they will undoubtedly pull it out when the temperatures plummet and they need relief from the cold. Possibly the most endearing donation went to a young orphan in the Ukraine. The 14-year-old boy was ecstatic to receive such an item of luxury. I am positive that Viktor could feel the love enveloping him when he wrapped up in that quilt.
God brought confirmation upon the "Piecemakers" last year when one of the most beloved women ever to serve in our church passed away. When the family was sorting through her items, they came across a box of quilt blocks that a group of women had joined together to make. They had never pieced the quilt. The "Piecemakers" felt such a connection to their past and their present ministry when they were given guardianship of the quilt blocks. They quickly pieced the quilt and it now hangs in our church sanctuary.
The "Piecemakers" really never know for sure how their gifts impact the life of others. Recently, I visited an elderly lady from our congregation that has been hospitalized. As I sat talking with her, I noticed that her fingers were wrapped around her quilt and she was tenderly rubbing her fingers across it. She expressed how beautiful the quilt was and how it had touched her heart since receiving it. She said, "Such a beautiful quilt from ladies with such beautiful hearts." [written by Karen Pollock of Raymond Baptist Church, Webster, Kentucky. 2007]
IN ADDITION:
I could not let this article publish without piecing on a few paragraphs of my own. Raymond Baptist Church is the first church my husband pastored. Straight out of Boyce Bible School, a division of Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. The first gift that was given to us when we arrived at the parsonage was a quilt made by one of the ladies of the church. She had passed away and her husband wanted us to have it as a gift in her memory. Through the years that beautiful patchwork quilt covered my fevered children, joined us on picnics outside, to the beach on vacation and even ended up on my diningroom table as a tablecloth. Pure country decorating!
While I was the pastor's wife of that little church set in the rural roads of Kentucky farmland, we were embraced as family. The creativity and goodness from those women of 27 years ago is still living on in the lives of these ladies today. For while we ministered among them, I witnessed countless quilts stitched in love for people whose homes were burned, neighbors in need, and homebound members. While the virtue of their hands moved with precision, fingers struggled with arthritis and pain. But they sewed on.
The homemaking gifts these women used to minister in Christ's name were simply the Holy Spirit's gift of hospitality exemplified in every pie they baked and every craft they assembled for Vacation Bible School. But one of the most impressive things I'll always remember is their hands folded in prayer each month as they met to lift up Southern Baptist missionaries serving around the world in a little Sunday School room just off the choir loft. It was the same ladies who met and prayed earnestly for the lost in our community--for their children and grandchildren.
This story from Karen, a young woman who was but a child when we were at Raymond, brings tears to my eyes and blessing to my heart. For the legacy of past meets present as they continue on with a ministry far more reaching and warming than any of the quilts they create. For their greatest legacy is the love they had for others and gave away in the name of Christ our Lord. If that isn't the most important ministry, I don't know what is. Those women didn't have degrees from college--nor vocations and ambitions that took them beyond their farmlands. But they took what God gave them and used it for His glory.
And as Karen related in the beginning of this post, these Piecemakers today simply long to do likewise. Truly a virtuous woman can be found in Kentucky. selahV
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