Sewing Box

James Cathcart December 26, 2021 0 0

Playlists

Add to Favourites

Save for later

Listen to this daily worship

1 Samuel 2: 18-21 (NRSVA)

18 Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy wearing a linen ephod. 19 His mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year, when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. 20 Then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife, and say, ‘May the Lord repay you with children by this woman for the gift that she made to the Lord’; and then they would return to their home.

21 And the Lord took note of Hannah; she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the Lord.

Every year Hannah gets out the sewing box. It’s time to make the little uniform her son needs. It’s only small, but it’s bigger than last year’s, which was bigger than the one before that. She whispers prayers into each stitch, drawing her breath and the thread in and out.

In and out.

She looks down below. A few children are playing. Kicking something in the street. She doesn’t mind the noise. ‘Make all the noise you like’, she feels like shouting. But she doesn’t. She won’t intrude on the scene, interrupt what’s happening. Instead she prays them into the next few stitches. Some of them, the smaller ones, look to be about the age of her son. All these children, coming and going. Like the tide, much the same day in day out but revealing untold marvels at the same time. Like the tide in their ragged, varied heights too. Small ones replacing big ones, tiny ones replacing small ones. Big ones disappearing. Like the tide. Out and in.

Out and In.

When she’s done she puts the clothes into a box ready to take to her son. The years come generous and cruel, giving and taking, relentless and wonderful. She says a final prayer as she wraps a string around the box. She ties the string into a knot and wishes that for a moment she could take the years… all of them… and weave them in and out into a knot fixed in place.

In and out. Out and in.

She takes the box and tucks it under her arm. Time to go.

PRAYER:

This Boxing Day Lord Jesus,

We ask you,

What could we box up for the children in our lives, in our society?

What are the hopes and gifts we have for them?

Bless us with your generosity and openness,

Amen.