What is your craft?

Recently was looking through some old friends' blogs..

Each one has a number of hobbies that they spend alot of time and finances on, then they will usually take pictures of the results and post them up on their blogs. Tiffany and Keqing do scrapbooking and cross-stitching, Keqing in particular has got 2(!) whole boxes of scrapbooking equipment alone which had cost her over $1000 (That's One Thousand dollars, no typo!) to buy and maintain. Their cross stitches are oh-my-so-good, so many pieces that range from bookmarks to huge wall hangings in all the colours of the rainbow and all the super complicated patterns.

Tiffany also does blogskins and both their husbands do photography.

Juan is another one who is into cross stitching, the other thing she likes to craft is her baking items.. Never content just to achieve great tasting food, she would think of ways to adorn her food and make it both irresistable to eat but yet 舍不得吃 because you just want to continue looking at the cookies and muffins and admiring them. Thats why I have bullied her into baking cakes for my wedding.. ahaha..

Liyi makes cards extraordinaire, if you have ever been a recipient of any of W80 or W110 birthday cards, you would know how much love and effort (and materials!) goes in the making of each single piece. I have never ever seen her repeat a card design.. She would stay up till 3 or 4 am just to get the cards right.

Jing does jewellery making and does it so well that she can bring her pieces out to sell. Every time she brings a new creation of her crystals neckalces and earrings to church, she will be the center of attention of all the gals around who will eagerly search among her stocks for their favourite colours.

As I look at all the things my friends are doing, I felt like an under-achiever as I have never mastered any of those things. Probably the closest I came to having some kind of craft is making friendship bands in secondary school? But I have not touched my threads in years, I don't even know where my pattern books are anymore. I admire my friends' talent, their dedication to their craft, their creativity and inspiration to make new things, the hours they spend to train and hone their skills and perfect their creations. I began to wonder about myself, how I have spend my life, why I have never managed to find the time to start up hobbies like these. Instead all my time I spent on tuitions, church, ministry, teaching in school.. All the way since my junior college days. I would even give up on watching TV programs totally so that I can have more time to serve.

I began to wonder if I had wasted my time, so old already and yet no accomplishments to show the world that I have done.

I began to wonder if others see me as a very boring person, who does nothing but eat and work and sleep.. After all, I have no hobbies, no ability to make beautiful things with my hands, nothing at all.

But then my God corrected me.

He showed me that what I craft is lives.

All the time I spent on my students, my ushers, all goes into crafting each one of them into better people, man and woman of character, strong pillars in the house of God.

What I am doing now, I have nothing to show for on this earth. But I believe that when I get to heaven and see through the eyes of God, I will be able to see the amazing and fantastic tapestries of the lives of the people I have been with and I will know somehow that I have been involved in weaving a small part of each. All the time, effort, tears, joy, will all be worth it because a little is much in my Potter's hands.