Palm Sunday and the unveiling of The Banners!

We have been working on these banners for the last 18 months.

We presented them at church today for Palm Sunday.

My vicar asked my friend Abbie if she would like to make some and she said she would ask me. The vision she had was for lots of textures, colours, fabrics all meshed together and entwined.We got lots of bargain fabric from an outlet warehouse that sell end of rolls by weight. I used lots of my lifetime collection of buttons and Gran's lifetime collection of embroidery threads!

As a house group we have prayed and worked hard on this and had fun and laughter as well as tears and sadness along the way.We felt that it is a symbolic creative expression of what God does in our lives. He takes our mess, our fragmented and shattered lives. He loves us and lives in us. He puts us together with others and calls us His Church. His beautiful and spotless Bride. During the last 18 months there has been a lot that has happened to us as a group of girls. Engagements, a wedding, new birth, house hunting, job hunting, broken friendships, illness and challenges, conflicts to resolve, shattered dreams, broken promises, the wonder of bewilderment, questions of future and direction.

A rich tapestry of life.

Quite a journey.
Maybe you can relate to some of these things too?
For us, knowing that God is the One who holds things together has been amazing for us to persevere and keep going through the joys and laughter and the ups and downs.

When we started the banners, I led my first all age service at church. We looked at David and Goliath and the faithfulness of God. When David went into battle he took his staff. He had already fought the lion and the bear and knew that the God who had helped him would prove himself faithful again.
The significance of his staff was that he would already have 2 notches carved out of it. A notch carved for each battle won. 2 examples of the provenness of God as he went into battle. Faithful God. The God who is faithful who leads us through. We each had long strips of cloth and each tied knots into them to represent our own journey with God, recording the significant times we have known and seen the Faithfulness of God for ourselves.

We kept these as tassels and added them to the banners.

Today we read a beautiful poem called Tapestry that one of our talented girls from house group wrote. It seemed to fit with the service and our banners perfectly.
You can read it here.We also read from the Message: 1 Peter 2.
I hope you like the finished banners and that you can reflect on the times when God has proved Himself faithful to you, particularly in this Holy Week as we approach Easter. Have a blessed week.