97. If I Had A Hammer

Here’s the first of four blocks I have added to the original 96 of the Bible Sampler quilt. Why am I adding more blocks? It’s because I’m doing a different layout. My quilt will be 10 blocks across by 10 blocks down for a total of 100 blocks.

The Bible has been read cover to cover, so for these last four blocks, I’m stepping back to look at the Bible as a whole.

“Stepping back and looking at the whole” has been a theme here lately. I’ve been tying my Farmer’s Wife Sampler this month for the OMG. I’ve seen my rookie errors and sloppy piecing up close and personal as I’ve tied each block. Ugh. Discouragement. But when I step away, the parts are lost to the whole. I like it again. It’s going to be okay. I have to remember to step back and take the long view in other areas of my life as well.

Stepping back and reviewing the Bible as a whole, I thought of how it is called a sword: “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow, it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12).

The sword pierces and reveals our sin. Yikes, what then? How do we deal with that?

At the Maundy Thursday service during Holy Week, our pastor reminded us that the Garden of Gethsemane meant “place of crushing”. Literally, the olive presses were situated there to process the olives into oil. Why did Jesus choose to spend the last night of his life at that place? For him, a sleepless, soul-crushing night of agony and struggle? It is there that he ultimately chose to crush his own will in submission to that of Almighty God.

Here’s where the anvil comes in. Besides a sword, the Bible is like an anvil too. It is solid and unchangeable. We cannot take a hammer to it, bending its words of truth to suit us. Instead, we are what must bow to the hammer, allowing the anvil to crush us.

So that’s what we do. Once we’ve been pierced by the sword of the spirit, we must face the anvil. Being a follower of Christ requires complete surrender of our own will to God’s. How do we do that? Read the Bible. Pray. All of the answers as to how we are meant to live are found in the pages of God’s word. The truth is all in there. Out there, an overwhelming amount of teaching is available about Christianity. None compare to the straight up reading of the Holy Bible. Stick with the source, and it will do its work.

“And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2.)

I don’t know how He does it, transforming our minds, I just know He does when we fill our heads with the words of the Bible.