Sawdust and Woodchips

When the Baldwin bunch, not my crew but Mom’s and Dad’s, were living in Chester, Virginia, we had a +.very steep roof, and on the front of the house were two dormers.  Dad converted half of the attic into a bedroom for my two brothers and me.  The other half became his shop.  In front of the shop side of the dormer, dad had a small, simple wood lathe.  I have two “dough box” end tables he made for Mom.  The legs of the tables were turned on that old lathe.  That lathe in that dormer is where my introduction to woodturning took place.

I took woodshop in high school just to work on a full-size lathe.  I still have the walnut bowl I created.

I have always had a wood lathe of some sort, but it was not until each of our kids was in their “independent” teen years that I had any time to do woodworking.  The less time I needed to keep my loving husband/father commitments, the more time I had to do the hands-on work I love.  Since I retired, there has been more, but not enough, time to develop my woodworking interest.

Dad gave me his Craftsman lathe when he upgraded.  Since then, I have upgraded first to a Jet 1236.  Today, I have a Powermatic 3520 B wood lathe.  For me, it is a beast of a machine.  This lathe has allowed me to turn larger pieces of wood.  It has a 12-inch swing that enables me to turn a bowl twenty-one inches in diameter.  Accordingly, when it comes time to put a piece of wood between centers, I have an electric winch hanging from the ceiling to do the lifting freeing me to concentrate on placement. 

There have been pieces of wood that started out weighing more than sixty-plus pounds.  At that weight and at turning RPMs, you learn a lot about the physical laws governing the universe in a hurry.  And often, painfully.

When a piece of wood has become a bowl or a lamp, it is often less than two pounds in weight.  That means roughly ninety-eight percent of the log I started with was at my feet.  Everything that was in the way of the bowl I was creating had to be removed.  Is that wasting magnificent wood?  Of course not!  The finished creation becomes the glory of the entire piece of log.  Without the sawdust and wood chips, there would have been no log, no bowl.

I believe one of God’s most significant obstacles in creating humans to be the Kingdom rulers He envisioned is their reluctance to have the physical removed from the eternal.  As I reflect on the prayers I have listened to over the years, one constant theme has been the request for God to refresh, restore, and replenish the physical qualities, the log.  God wants to create a functional and aesthetic bowl for His use.  But, humans, i.e., me, pray for God to enhance our “existing log.”

Faith is trusting God to remove everything and anything that does not reflect His beauty or purposes from our total being.  Most often, that includes what we would call painful loss of the substance that makes us distinct from other humans around us.  God has a vision for his “image” we refer to as “me.”  The difference between what I envision Fred should look like and what God has planned for me to be must come become sawdust and woodchips.

You are an essential chunk of Kingdom potential as you sit there reading these words.  Let God do His crafting to perfect you for the Kingdom.  Both you and God will be glad you did.

I think that is at least part of what the Apostle Paul was communicating to us when he said, “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”  Romans 8:28 CAB)

Please notice “all things” don’t “work together” for our “pleasure,” but for our “good.”  Connect that “good” back to the “very good” in Geneses 1:31. And that “very good” has to do with humans being His “image.”  Contained in that hyperlink is a hope worth hanging on to!              

Let the wood chips fly, and the sawdust pile up!

Photo – Roscoe came over to visit my shop. He liked one of my woodchips and sawdust piles. He’s wondering if I’ll let him stay.