Knitting - a Novel

I bought this book at the Country Kitchen Restaurant and Gift Shop at Callaway Gardens. It was small, had a nice cover, had the word "knitting" in the title, AND was on sale :-) Just my kind of book :-)

Written by Anne Bartlett, an Australian, who obviously is an avid knitter.

I plunged into it. Three characters whom I knew she would weave together, but I didn't realize how quickly. Three very different characters, but that's what makes for fun. I knew there was going to be much more to the developments, but I wasn't quite sure what. I knew the book would be deeper. It had to be. So I plugged along, enjoying it for the story, thinking that "it" was just below the surface and yet I wasn't figuring "it" out.

And then "it" hit me!

Grief...

Compassion...

burdens....

The janitor in the white coat...

Cleaning the church...

Gifts...

and this spoke to me... context is that Martha knits without patterns... ahhh, it just hit me that her name is Martha... ha, so much to be done and no one to help :-)

"But there's no words, no rules. How do you do it with no words?"

"You just try it out. If it doesn't work, you try a different way. If you have words, you have rules, and rules have to be obeyed. But this way when you look at the drawings, the pattern gets into your heart somehow. The rules are still there but you hardly notice. It's much bigger and better than rules."

This reminds me that God's word is written on our hearts. Even without the "rules" written down, we know that we must obey God. We can see his handiwork everywhere. And when we love Him, we will obey without thinking of the "rules."