Wednesday, June 5, 2013

hospitality, knitting, and market bags

Not having had a knitting project in my hands for some time and, therefore, not being able to be a part of Ginny's Yarnalong, it was with great delight that I perchance ran across this pattern for a cotton market bag recently, and with summer time lull (who am I kidding?) wrapping me in its grips, I promptly ran upstairs to my stash and gathered several balls of cotton yarn and began knitting one right then and there! Especially welcomed along with the sweet arrival of local farmers markets now dotting grassy lawns, street corners and paved parking lots throughout the town.

this is the bottom of the bag, decreasing having begun

The subject of Christian hospitality and its practice in our society has stirred a deep desire within me to  to learn more about what this imperative and necessary mandate truly means. What were the writers in the New Testament teaching when they told the early Christians to practice hospitality? Somehow I believe my ideas fall short of its original meaning in Scripture. As a part of the body of Jesus Christ, His Church, I am challenged to rethink and search out the historical roots of this fundamental custom. 

                      "Recovering hospitality as a vital aspect
                               of Christian life will be more complex 
                               than simply resurrecting an old-fashioned practice".



A close-up of the artwork on the front cover, a mosaic entitled, Abraham and the Angels,
wonderfully appropriate.


a chickadee

 I have taken to afternoon walks in the fields along the side of the woodlands. Today I carried along a small pair of binoculars hoping to c...