On the 4th Thursday of the month, a group of women gather at First Lutheran with two intentions in mind: 1) Create beautiful quilts and 2) Have a lot of fun doing it!
Amidst conversation and laughter, the women intently go to work – cutting, designing, sewing and tying. As each quilt is finished, it is lovingly stored in a cabinet until the time comes for all of them to be shipped to Lutheran World Relief and distributed around the country and world to people in need of the warmth and protection offered by a quilt. Before they are shipped, all the quilts make a debut during worship when they are lifted up in prayer…
God, we give you thanks for the pieces of fabric, thread, sewing machines and hands that fashioned hope into each quilt. Bless these quilts wherever they may be used that they may provide warmth and security to those who have experienced tragedy or who have no other shelter. May all who receive these quilts be wrapped in your love and forgiveness and encounter your grace and peace. Renew our mission to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, cloth the naked, comfort the weary and outcast, welcome the stranger and be a loving neighbor to all people of the earth. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.
Yesterday, in worship, we prayed for and blessed 94 quilts made by our quilters this past year! You couldn’t help but feel love, compassion and hope as you entered the Sanctuary and saw the quilts so beautifully draped over the backs of each pew. In a few weeks they will all leave our building and find their way to a home or individual needing help and comfort while our quilters continue to use their talents to create more quilts – beautiful messages of love – to people all over the world.
If you would like to be a part of this ministry at First Lutheran, know you are welcome any time. No quilting experience is needed! You will also have the opportunity to support the quilters in a variety of ways at our Gifts of Hope market on December 3 and 4.
God bless quilters!
