A Promise Made--A Promise Kept

 We made the promise last January.  We would, we told Cher, finish the Quilt Book for her.   Cher had started it years ago in a loose-leaf notebook.  It contained her quilt designs and quilt photos.  She tried to finish the book last January, but could not.  That’s when we made the promise.

With the help of Paul, Rachel, and especially Luke (who pulled it all together for us), the promise made a year ago, has now been kept.  “Cherie’s Quilt Book:  All Things Bright and Beautiful” has been published.

Our promise made and kept reminds me of the Advent Promise, something I experienced, “breaking forth from the bud”, several years ago when we attended an Annual Christmas Concert at an Interfaith Center with our son, Paul, and his wife, Helen.

Hundreds of people were lined up waiting for the doors to open.  Hundreds of people filed into the auditorium filling every available seat.  “Three cheeks to a chair,” someone announced, so “everyone can have a place to sit” and the audience responded with laughter and three cheeks to a chair (COVID-19 was not a threat then). An orchestra of at least 40, a Children’s Choir of over 30, and an Adult Choir of nearly 100 were seated before us.  Above their heads a banner proclaimed:  “All Faiths, All Ages, All Races, All Sexes.”  

I looked at the program and noted the names representing many different nationalities and cultures:  Youstra, Scimonelli, Kim, Javadov, Onukwugna, Cueves, Ndekwu, and Williams.  I looked at the audience and saw the same wondrous thing.  There were people of many colors, ages and appearances.  Some in the audience were young, some were old, and some in-between.  What a mixture—people, some not so well off, others well-to-do (you can always tell)—all together in one place. This is God’s Promise, I thought, coming to fruition, “a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky.”  This is the Promise of Advent (Emmanuel:  God with us), even now breaking forth from the bud.  

You see, only if Emmanuel is “born anew in us” can the Advent Promise be fulfilled—“All Faiths, All Ages, All Races, All Sexes.”  Only if Love becomes the norm, can the myriad pieces of humanity (colors, shapes, sizes—religions, lifestyles, politics, philosophies) be sewn together into a quilt.  The Promise was made—the Promise is kept (when we learn how to love one another in spite of our differences).

“Joy to the world! (we sang together that night) the Lord has come:  Let earth receive her King. Let every heart prepare him room, And heav’n and nature sing…”