Monday, November 2, 2026
Hello from Colorado! Have you ever owned a piece of clothing you loved so much that you wore it until it just couldn’t be worn anymore?
I don’t mean something expensive or something everyone else admired. I mean that one piece that fit you perfectly. Maybe you wore it so often it became soft in all the right spots. Maybe it was with you on good days, bad days, vacations, workdays, and all those ordinary days when nothing special happened.
Then one day, you notice a tear.
At first, you think, “I can fix that.”
So you stitch it.
Maybe you wear it again, and soon another spot starts to tear. You try to fix it again. But after a while, the fabric is so worn out that it can’t hold another stitch.
That’s a hard realization.
Sometimes we can’t restore the thing we love to what it once was.
I’ve been thinking about that in life.
We all have things in life that tear—dreams, relationships, plans. Sometimes even our sense of who we are gets torn too. We often try hard to put things back just the way they were, because that’s how we remember them and how we wish they could stay.
But what if some things aren’t meant to be put back exactly the way they were?
What if the tear is telling us that the old fabric has done what it was meant to do?
That doesn’t mean the life is over.
It may mean the garment needs refashioning.
The style may be outdated. And what we thought we’d keep forever could turn into something completely different. Even if we didn’t choose the change, we can still decide what to do with what’s left.
That’s where faith comes in for me.
I don’t think God lets the worn places in our lives go to waste, like in the story of the 3,000, where he tells everyone to gather up the leftover fragments. Because of that story, I truly believe God doesn’t waste the broken or worn-out pieces of our lives.
The years we feel like we lost aren’t wasted. Maybe they left us with scars or with dreams that look different than we planned. But maybe God isn’t trying to patch up what we keep holding onto. Maybe He wants to show us how to start fresh with what we have left. A tear in the fabric might change the garment, but it doesn’t change our worth.
Maybe God isn’t trying to patch up what we keep holding onto. Maybe He wants to show us how to start fresh with what we have left. A tear in the fabric might change the garment, but it doesn’t change our worth.
I’m not sure what your tear looks like today.
Maybe you know exactly what it is.
Maybe you’re still trying to hide it.
Or maybe you’re starting to wonder if the tear you’ve been grieving could actually be the start of something you haven’t imagined yet.
This month, we’ll spend some time looking at those stitches.
Not just the pretty ones.
The loose stitches. The crooked ones. The ones we don’t understand yet.
Because sometimes we can’t see what God is making while we’re still standing in the middle of the tearing.
Today’s Scripture: “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” — Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV)
Personal Thoughts: I find those words comforting. Not everything is beautiful right away. Some things hurt, let us down, and/or leave us wondering what happened to the life we expected. But “in its time” leaves room for God to work beyond what we can see right now. The tear may not be the end of the story; it’s where the next stitch begins.
See you tomorrow for another 15 minutes with God.
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