Our lives are like beautiful quilts that God has woven together for us even before we are in our mother's wombs.  Every moment of our lives, every choice we make, every relationship we cultivate are the squares of fabric that make up our rich lives.  Every stitch that binds the pieces of precious fabric together counts. 

The quilt of my life has been richly sewn together with my family, friends, and faith.  Although it gets more  worn with age, it is still beautiful and has a terrific story to tell if I can keep the quilt pieces together. 

We are all careful to keep close watch on the loose stitches, the weaknesses, in our quilts. But while we quard those areas we believe to be prey for Satans hands, Satan is a busy tailor at work, taking his long bony fingers and slowly, deftly, quietly pulling at the strong threads that bind our lives to God - the stitches we don't watch as closely.   His goal is to leave our lives in tatters before we notice them falling apart and becoming threadbare. 

The father of lies starts out slowly unravelling our carefully, painstakingly sewn stitches.  He pulls at the threads of our relationships easily by placing doubt, discouragement, and distrust into our thoughts.  Before we know it the husband or wife we loved so much is now not as worthy of our affection.  He carefully unravels the work of  our faith lives in subtle  moves, so subtle that we don't even realize our threads are being pulled apart until it is too late and we are praying for our own will to be done, our vision to be realized instead of God's will to  be done and His vision to be realized.  He pulls at our world, taking the stitches slowly apart as we allow more and more of the popular culture to muddle the waters of our Christian lives.  Soon our Christian life becomes watered down into something that resembles Christianity but isn't really the true Christ-follower's life. 

As Christians we sometimes do start to recognize that Satan is pulling our threads trying to dismantle the quilt of our lives.  When that happens and we resist his efforts, a knot develops in the thread and Satan pulls all the harder.  Sometimes we are so persistent in our fight to keep the stitches intact, that he has to use a seam ripper like our emotions to get the job done.  It oftentimes does the trick because it is so easy for us as humans to walk our lives in emotion instead of in the Holy Spirit.

Try as we might there are times when our stitches are pulled apart. The seams of our relationships, our faith life, our lives in general are split.  The fabric of our lives, our quilt squares seem beyond repair.  We don't need to worry though, if we have Christ in our lives, our lives can be mended.  Indeed God is the great Mender.  Not only does He weave our quilts together with love and compassion like a tailor who is passionate about his work, but He is constantly there with needle in hand to stitch up the threadbare squares of our lives.  Our quilts are sewn together with God's mercy and constant forgiveness of our pulled apart, tattered and torn, frayed, and shabby lives.