Stitched with Thread from Your Heart

What are you making? What are you building? What are you baking? What are you creating? Some of you spend your days making food. Some of you build houses. Some of you teach. Some of you organize. Some of you design. Some of you do a little of everything. Whatever you do, you are providing goods and services to people around you, whether in your own home or outside your home. 

But the Bible teaches that whatever is in our hearts inexorably comes out of us. And it gets into whatever we are doing. If you have an anxious or bitter heart, your anxiety or bitterness will come out in what you are making. If you are full of lust and envy, whatever you are creating and providing will have your lust and envy mixed into it. If you are frustrated or angry that will get baked into the casserole you are making. And whoever wanted an angry casserole for dinner? And all of this tends to create more trouble everywhere we go.  

Our temptation is to point everywhere except our own hearts. Why am I bumping into my husband, my wife, my co-worker, my children, my parents, my siblings, my roommates? Why do we keep having arguments, disagreements, or worse? We want to point to all the external factors: food, clothing, time, words, tone, health, and these certainly can be factors, but Jesus teaches that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, out of the heart, uncleanness flows, out of our hearts, trouble comes. If you want what you’re making to be good, if you want it to be a real blessing to those around you, then your heart must be full of goodness and blessing. 

The bottom thread in a sewing machine is wound around a bobbin, and every time the needle plunges down, it catches the thread from the bobbin to make a stitch. Your heart is the bobbin of everything you do. Everything you set your hands to will be stitched with thread from your heart. 

So what are you making? What are you sewing with your hands? If you’ve been having trouble, consider whether you’ve simply had a bad attitude, a grumpy heart, an ungrateful heart. The promise of God is that there really is a very easy fix. Confess your sins, and God will wash you clean. Get clean now so you can get back to making real goods, really good things, so that God’s blessing and kindness will be stitched into everything you make.

Photo by Maksudur Rahman on Unsplash