I look at the quilt displayed in the middle of the room and lament touches my heart. “This is the room where Queen Liliʻuokalani spent her imprisonment,” the recorded tour of Iolani Palace tells me. This room. This one room. For eight months in 1895, the Queen of the Kingdom of Hawai’i was imprisoned in a bedroom while men of power laid the groundwork for the kingdom to be illegally annexed by the United States.

In this one room she found solace in the Book of Common Prayer as she prayed for her people. In this one room she composed hymns and prayers. In this one room she, and the one companion with her, sewed a patchwork quilt, a mosaic of beautiful fabrics and embroidery and hemmed with sorrow for the Hawai’ian people.

A continent and ocean and 130 years away, this woman of faith reaches out to inspire me, to show me more of God’s mercy and steadfastness, and to call me deeper into the work of reconciliation.

Whenever I am afraid, O God,
I will put my trust in you.
Psalm 56:3