About Margaret's Hope Chest

Margaret’s Hope Chest was born out of tragedy. What else could you call the senseless murder of an 80-year old woman in a grocery store parking lot? Margaret Herrema was my Grandmother. She lived a full and generous life as a wife of 57 years, a mother to 5, grandmother to 17, and great-grandmother to 8. She found additional joy serving others through her volunteer sewing work. Imagine our family’s shock when on April 28, 2005 she was pushed to the ground in a struggle over her purse and suffered a massive head injury. She died two days later on April 30, 2005. It would have been easy to lose hope and despair in human kind’s potential for evil. During this time I remember reading Romans 12:12-13, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need.” By the grace of God and the guidance of this verse I was able to see past my own pain and confusion and look out upon a world filled with countless other hopeless people - people who were in the middle of equally painful circumstances. Margaret’s Hope Chest is a blending of two passions in my life - quilting and helping to spread God’s hope in a broken world.