No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.(Luke 5:3)

A NEEDED PATCH

“Can you fix him?” Four year old Dennis asked, holding out to me his Mickey Mouse doll, minus one ear.

I inspected it carefully. “The seam is ripped,” I told him. “And some of the stuffing has come out. I can sew the old ear back on and mend the rip.”

“I don’t know where it is,” murmured Dennis. “I looked all over. I can’t find it!” Tears started forming in the corners of his eyes.

Seated next to me, my sister-in-law eyed it. “You could ask for a new one for your birthday,” she suggested cheerfully. “That’s just two weeks away.”

Dennis pulled the well-loved stuffy into  his arms. “No!” he said. “I don’t want a NEW Mickey. I want Mom to fix THIS one!” He buried his head in the Mickey doll and started to sob.

“It’s alright,” I said and pulled my son onto my lap. “I can make a new ear. But it won’t look the same as the old one. It won’t match.”

“That’s okay,” said Dennis. “It’ll still be MY Mickey!”

OLD FOR NEW

My son’s reluctance to consider trading his well-loved toy for a new one is not very different from the attitude of the Pharisees that confronted Jesus when He brought changes to the customary forms of worship Judaism required. “But we’ve always done it THIS way!” I can imagine them whining as they stood in the doorway of Matthew’s home, watching Jesus dine with other tax collectors and those considered to be sinners.

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Jesus answered them, “It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32).

To further illustrate the need to “cast off the old and embrace the new”, Jesus used the parable of the patched clothing:

 No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.(Luke 5:3)

FINDING A PATCH

I thought about this parable the next day as I sorted through my sewing basket, hunting for a piece of fabric that would most nearly match the missing Mickey ear. I had black fabric, but it wasn’t the same soft velour as the original. It would have to do. I laid the fabric out and started to cut around it, thinking about the many times I had patched rips and tears in clothing.

Putting new patches on old clothing extended the use of my kids’ clothes.  But was I doing it in other areas of my life?

 Raised in a church that valued tradition and over-complicated the message of salvation, I had sometimes tried to keep the old with the new, praying the standard prayers I had learned to tick off with beads instead of allowing my spirit to guide my words. I told myself I honored my mother–whose church had meant a lot to her–in this way. I realized that I was doing exactly what Jesus had said NOT to do; I was trying to combine two things that did  not belong together.

A NEW PIECE

I studied Dennis’ doll carefully. One ear was still in place, so I could simply fashion another ear from the black scrap cloth. But perhaps it would be better, I mused, to make the new ear entirely different. A piece of yellow corduroy soon replaced the missing piece. And while my son was happy with the result, the presence of that yellow ear reminded me to stop trying to infuse my old church practices with what I knew as a born-again Christian. 

Mickey Mouse remained Dennis’ companion for a few more years, but eventually–as with all old and worn-out things–it, too, took a backseat to the new world of paintbrushes, oils and canvases. Mickey sat on his bed for a while, then found its way into a closet. The last time I saw the doll, it was shoved into a WaWa crate the day Dennis moved out.

Like my son, I needed to move on from the old to the new, embracing the sacrifice of Jesus for my salvation without any further complications.

And while Mickey Mouse is no longer a focal point of my son’s life, Dennis is always the one at  his art studio called upon to draw the Disney character for company events.

We replace old ideas as we grow, but we can still learn from where we’ve been.