On The Flip Side

When I was a young boy, I remember my mother hand-sewing quilts, which were suspended from the  ceiling on four long, skinny planks.  It looked liked a big square hanging midway between the sheet rock and the linoleum.

The quilt hang right side up, which left a view of the underside of the quilt the only thing I could see from my angle on the floor.  What I saw was lot of hanging threads that would be periodically cut off and other threads that were stitched in some fairly rough looking patterns.

From where I stood, looking up at the back side of the quilt, it didn't look like much.  But when she was through sewing and spread it out on a bed, I could see the finished product.  There were no clipped threads, no rough looking patterns.  What I could see from the other side was a work of art.

The work in process from my view was nothing like the finished product that I would see later, which my mother saw all the time as she steadily worked pulling the thread through, cutting it off on the back side, producing a rather rough looking back side in contrast with the perfected top side that was in the making.

As I look at my life and the lives of others, I see a similar view from the back side where the threads of our mistakes are being pulled through and cut off, where the pattern of our living is fuzzy and seemingly incomplete.  From the back side where I stand, it looks kind of rough, but in Christ's hands our lives are being perfected and one day, on the flip side, we will see His work of art.

This, I believe is the meaning of Paul's words when he penned, "But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation" (Col 1:22).  Yeah, you can find flaws in me now and I in you.  But one day, through the redemptive work of Jesus by the power of the Spirit according to the will of the Father, we will presented as perfect and complete.  Jus' Say'n.