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Saturday, March 26, 2011

Philippians 4:6-7 "Do not be anxious about ANYTHING, but in EVERYTHING, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

This scripture was chosen for the Stampin' Sisters in Christ Challenge. The two words that really stood out to me were Anything and Everything. I have found in my life that worries or anxious thoughts fall into two categories: Big things and little things.

Big things are things that I know I have no control over. Will my husband loose his job? Will my friend's mom be healed of her cancer? Will the economy get worse? You get the idea. I know that have no control over whether my husband has a job or not. I know I can't heal cancer. I know that I can't control the economy. How do I deal with the big problems? I give them over to my God. I love the phrase that says... I don't know what tomorrow holds, but I know who holds tomorrow.

The other category of worries is the little things; You know, the little things that seem to aggitate us and stress us out. These are the things that I feel I do have control over. I find that these can make me more anxious than the big things. I start my day thinking ok I'm handling this but as they add up I start to feel overwhelmed. When I finally reach my breaking point I give those stresses over to God because I say "I just can't take it anymore!!!" How much more peace would I have in my life if when the little things came along that I gave them right away to God.

I was reminded of the folk story about a man who was walking down the road carrying a heavy load. Let's say his name was Mike. Another man, lets call him Joe was driving down that same road. Joe saw that Mike was really struggling with the load and he took pity on him. Joe offered Mike a ride. Mike accepted the ride but continued to hold on to his heavy load. After they had gone for a few miles, Joe asked Mike why he didn't just set the load down. Mike replied that he was so appreciative of the ride that he felt bad about Joe having to carry the load too.

My holding on to the little things and worrying about them makes just as much sense as Mike's logic.

So to not worry about ANYTHING, Paul tells us to pray, ask, and give thanks about EVERYTHING and give those requests to God. The result will be PEACE. The world sees peace as the absence of all problems. To me PEACE is knowing that when problems come, my God is in control and He has promised never to leave me or forsake me!!! What an awesome God I have!!!

The challenge for this week is to make a card with the homonym of PEACE... PIECE. We were to make a project with the technique called paper piecing.

If you have never tried this technique here is a link to the resource section of Splitcoast Stampers that describes it.

I chose to paper piece these pansies. These pansies are from the Mark's Finest Papers set called HAPPY PANSIES. I chose to use these pansies because of the big areas. It is a lot easier to piece big pieces. I started by stamping the pansy on purple paper. I stamped it 5 times for each flower. I then cut the pansies out 5 times. Each time I cut one less petal. To assemble I added a piece of craft foam in between the layers. Check back later this week, and I hope to have a tutorial on my blog showing this step by step.

I made this for a special girl named Ericka. She is one of my daughter's best friends.