Been spending most of the last couple of days working on a quilt. Piece by piece putting it together. My mind sort of gets lost to everything else that is going on in the world. All that matters at the moment is building, creating something. Trying my darnedest to put the pieces together the way they should go in a manner that will flow and look nice. Controling the tempo, controling the flow of the project. . . . and then comes the stumbling block. Sure things for the most part are going together nicely, as they are suppose to. Moment here or there when I have to stop and think about how its going, stop and evaluate. . . moments that are harder and moments when it is all flowing nicely. Then sure enough comes that one moment that trips me up, makes me re-evalute how its going, whether I can even do this and make something out of it.
I guess thats what got my mind to thinking about control and my mind wandered back to what a friend had said. They stopped preaching because they couldnt ‘control’ their wife, their marriage. . . . . how could one control a congregation if one couldnt control one’s own marriage, one’s own wife? It struck me wrong then and it strikes me wrong now. I dont think the person meant it as it sounded but then I think of those Fruedian slips. . . . and what had recently gone on. Control, its a big thing for most folks, heck for almost everyone I know including myself. And I remember listening to and evangelical preacher and her words on husband and wife. They came from:
Ephesians 5:22-33
New International Version (NIV)
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[b] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Control, I dont know anywhere in this passage does it say a husband is to control his wife? I recall that preacher speaking of how she was confused in regards to submitting to one’s husband and having a husband control her. I know for me at one point that I too confused the submitting with controling, they are not one in the same. Rather the two verses flow together in harmony. .. . . Christ sacrificed himself for the Church, he loves the Church, he gives all to us . . . and in so doing the Church, us, give all to him or rather we are suppose to. It is not control he has over us, but his love for us wants us to give all we have to his will, his superiority, to his wisdom. It is the weak man that tries to control what comes for there truly is only one who reigns above us all, who has the power and ability to forgive all of us if we accept what he has given us.
So often we look at what is going on, see how we affect and are affected by the actions around us. I wonder how often we sit back and accept what is going on around us is of God’s design? I think of the sorrow, the heartache we go thru, that we see . . . . and I wonder do we ever truly let go? I wonder how many sit back and observe what is going on and try to see what God is asking of them at that moment?
And yet I pull the stitches out, several rows and I think I know God “I’m not perfect, and I do not have his ability to create something of complete perfect.” … . .Yet you ask of me the best of me and that’s what I aim to give you, to show you. I wont settle for just the good, . . . . no, I’ll wait for your best 
continued. . . . . sometimes I wonder where my mind drifts too, so many hours working diligently on this quilt, completely focused on getting it done the hours pass by in a flash.
God, yup he is the one ultimately in control. . . yes I know he gives us free reign, free will but then I recall that so did Jesus with the Church. He did not sit upon the Church commanding her to do this and do that. He gave guidance, rules but like any good leader he knew enough that the Church would sway and try to run amock at times. The difference being that as with any good leader Jesus instilled upon the Church and upon us the desire to want to be with him. I think that is the essential core to it all, the desire to want to do things the way he said they should be done. That is not control, thats leadership and good leadership. The rules, that guidance, the laws Jesus put forth well they were a means of keeping that relationship with him.
Anyways, today I am back at it. . . the peices are all in place and now just trying to do the actual quilting again. In many ways for me the quilting is much like life, much like how I see God at work in our lives.. . . the pieces comeing together one scrap at a time. The pieces of my life are coming together bit by bit and though there are bumps in the road along the way feeling better about how it is coming together and a good feel of how it will be when its done.
