"Be still and know that I am God"

Just as the native banner was receiving the finishing touches, the thought for another come to me and was to be called "Be still and know that I am God". (Psalm 46 V10).

Prior to starting the banner, myself and another church member were visiting people who for various reasons could not leave their home. The minister asked if we would visit someone who had recently been bereaved and was suffering from deep depression.

I was please to be able to help. I could empathise because I had suffered similar, a period, which I call, my "time in the wilderness".

One of the hardest things to do is "be still" when you have been traumatized; just like the struggling, drowning man - he's hard to save until he is still and allow the rescuer save him, in the same my God wants to save us. So the banner carries this message for a reason.

I felt that the scene should be peaceful. The dove in flight above the calm scene of hills and water, and the tree of life, followed by the words "glorify his name".

As I knelt on the floor adding the finishing touches, I was thinking, well "this is the last one"; I was stunned. Another banner? I had no idea what that was meant to be but was sure I would be guided.

That night I woke in the early hours and I knew that the final banner was to be, "suffer the little children to come unto me". This is how God wants us to come to him - as a child, fully trusting and praising the Lord.

It was so important that this banner be hung in the church as it completed the story of Jesus' life on earth. I didn't realise this at the beginning of the work as they were not done in order, but I now understood the message that God wanted me to portray.

The illustration for this banner came form Psalm 122 - "let us go up tp the house God." The illustration of figure of Jesus came from my son's school Bible, St. John Chapter 21, V4 which depicted Jesus after the resurrection.

I wondered if I should be doing Jesus at all but I knew I would not have been inspired if it was not meant to be. When I was sewing the figure, I was really conscious of what I was doing but while I was stitching round the face I was stitching "blind" as the foot of the machine was actually obscuring what I was sewing.

All the time I was praying for God to guide my hands. Amazingly, the face is clear and well defined and not distorted as it could have been in the circumstances.

The wall in the church was waiting for it - right beside the Christening font.

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"Be still and know that I am God"