When love is the motive

Today’s post is just a gift dropped into my lap through a friend who has given me permission to share.

I was texting with her this week as she was cleaning out her kitchen cabinets. She has been my knitting coach and thanks to her I have ventured out beyond knitting squares and even have attempted cables…I know!

So at one point, she sent me a picture of what I thought was a knitted wrap around skirt for a doll. Or the outline of South Dakota.

But no.

When I read the accompanying explanation, I discovered it is actually a wash cloth. It was her sister’s first knitting project, and I can tell you it very much looked like a first knitting project.

She also said that  it was painful for her sister to make because, while she is a gifted cook, gardener and canner, she has always struggled with sewing and needlework.

Yet she had labored over this project that turned out far from desirable….while my friend was undergoing chemotherapy.

A gift of love made, during a difficult time, by hands gifted to do other things. And that fact adds to the preciousness of this item for my friend. She keeps it in the towel drawer and she smiles every time she sees it.

As I read her text, I thought…perhaps that is how God smiles when you and I go ahead and do things that we aren’t so good at, just because we love Him.

So often when we sign up to serve, or volunteer, or labor over something…we choose things we consider ourselves to be skilled in.

I know that He gave us our gifts and talents to be used for His glory.

But I wonder if it is as precious to Him as this misshaped wash cloth when we do things like: help in the nursery, even if kids aren’t our thing; or we visit the hospital room even though we faint at the sight of …you know… ; or we are a bit shy by nature, but we make the effort to greet people and introduce ourselves to them with a smile; or we go ahead and sing along with the Happy Birthday song around the table even though we know we can’t carry a tune.

Maybe “labors of love” sometimes mean that our gift costs us to relinquish our pride and our comfort to show we love enough to give our best to something we just really aren’t very good at….

God bless you all as you respond to His prompts based on your love for Him…not your abilities…