My friend Ben likes to whittle. Before I met him, I thought that whittling was something that only older gentlemen did in a rocking chair on a front porch somewhere in the deep South. Ben doesn’t need a rocking chair to get his whittling done. He whittles any place, any time, anywhere.
Sometimes I wander over when I see him pull his tools out and start chipping away. I’ll pepper him with questions about what he’s making, how he picked the wood, what tools he’s gonna use, so on and so forth.
One thing I’ve noticed is that Ben likes to pick wood that has rough edges. Something that looks like it has imperfections. He thinks that they’re good pieces of wood, they just need a little shaping up. He uses some pretty gnarly tools to make it all happen. One time I wanted to dabble with them and he warned me, “Be careful, they’re razor sharp.” I wondered why the tools had to be so sharp. I didn’t ask him though. I didn’t want him to think that I didn’t know a lot about whittling.
I like seeing the finished, whittled product. To me, it doesn’t happen fast enough. I get impatient wanting to know what it’s gonna look like. Whittling takes a lot of time, but Ben doesn’t mind. He enjoys the process.
One day, I picked up some wood that was in the process of becoming something beautiful. Honestly, it was still a little ugly. Not the finished product. It looked to me like it had promise tho. Ben thought so too. I stared at the wood a little closer. I realized why I liked it so much. It reminded me of me. A piece of wood with plenty of imperfections being carved by the Master Carpenter into the image of His Son. The tools He uses are sharp and sometimes painful. I pepper the Carpenter with lots of questions about the process. He doesn’t mind tho. He has a lot of patience and He enjoys the process.
Ben has a purpose statement for his life. I don’t remember all of it but it says something about craftsmanship. Craftsmanship. Isn’t that what we all are? Just a hunk of wood being crafted into something beautiful.
“ For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works…” Ephesians 2:10
