These Are My JOTtings...

The Thread of Our Lives

Recently, I have begun to get a mental picture of the way life is used. I learned this, while working on a needlepoint project that I would like to give to our local homeless mission. When I am finished with the picture, I hope that they will consider it to be worthy to adorn one of their walls.

Here's the concept. Our lives are like an individual thread that is used in the creation of a needlepoint picture. Whether we are making a cross-stitch, back stitch, a quilt or a friendship bracelet or something else that requires myriad threads, interwoven to create the image, each thread has only so much of the picture that it can personally create. Manufacturers cut all of the threads to the same length, but artists apportion out the threads as their colors and textures are needed in the picture. Some spaces require longer and some spaces require shorter thread lengths.

(One example of the back stitch to which I refer is the profile pic I have used to represent myself. This needlepoint of Snoopy was completed, mostly during a long road trip with my family, when I was 18 years old. It helped to focus my mind and to pass the time. Not to mention the fact that the project has proved to be a worthy tutor in my life.)

Ultimately, we could see every stitch as some interaction, some event or a day of life, if you will. Every stitch is a unique aspect of the whole picture. Every stitch (or every day) colors the completed picture in some way. It is important to remember that every stitch (or day) shortens the length of the thread of our lives by the length of one stitch (or one day.)

Every stitch has importance that is noticed by only the most observant, but the lack of a specified stitch is noticed by more humans, since we naturally tend to criticize more easily than we praise.

Every stitch of our lives is praiseworthy to creation of the whole of the HIStory of Humanity at the Hand of the Divine Artist. Will we use the extra effort necessary to learn to praise others? Will we use the heroic effort necessary to praise ourselves?