Hand crafted!!!

I have recently had the privilege of visiting some very interesting places.  The first place is a wood workers “shop” which is where we bought our furniture.

Every thing you see here is HAND made.  That means NO electrical equipment AT ALL was used.  Just hand saws, tape measures, hand planers, it was routed by hand using planers and a piece of sandpaper as well as ALL sanded with a piece of sandpaper and their hands.  This is all truly a work of art to watch and to see the final product.  An interesting side note is that while I worked at Kirkland's Home in the States, I sold a chair similar to this, but for a LOT more and not near as nice as these.

I sat for over an hour and watched these guys hand measure some wood while looking at a diagram and mark up the long plank to be cut.  Then, in order to "clamp" it down, they had a boy sit on one side, near the work table as they started to cut the wood.  No big deal you would think, except that they were trying to cut the plank down the middle, lengthwise.  The guy cutting it was standing at the end he was cutting and carfully watched every stoke of the hand saw as he pushed it through.  I watched another guy, the guy whose shop it is, as he carefully hand planed the edges off of a stool that he was making for us.  He did not rush, but rather took his time and payed close attention to every pass of the planer. Only after he was satisfied with the smoothness of the edges did he grab a well worn piece of sandpaper and start to use it, followed by a finer grain of sandpaper to finish it all off.  After seeing the attention he paid to the details of a stool, I was even more impressed with the beauty of the furniture that we got.  Then of course there was the hand carried delivery they offered as they carried all 4 pieces to our house a block away.

This reminded me of Eph. 2:10 "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."  The attention that these guys paid to the things they were making is NOTHING compared to the attention God paid when He created you and me.  If He is going to pay that kind of attention to something, you can rest assured that he did not create no junk AND that he has a purpose for you in this life.  He gave all of Himself to ransom you and He has not stopped working and perfecting you or me.  He has called each one of us to give Him our all and to be used for His glory.  Our chairs, while they are beautiful to look at, if that is all we did and never sat in them, they would not live up to their full potential.  You are the same way, if you shelve yourself rather than "getting into the game" and never share His love with anyone, than you are not living up to your full potential either.  Remember, If you are a Believer and a Follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, than you ARE called to be a minister no matter where you work, what you do, have done or will do. 

Be what God has crafted you to be!!