Morgan was a good friend of our family. He died recently but he often came for Sunday dinner after church and joined our family for holidays like Thanksgiving and Easter. Sometimes he brought a gift of candy or a book, but the gift I enjoyed the most was an intricate set of nested wooden hearts that he made and set in a frame. Morgan cut each heart at the slightest angle so that when they nest in the frame and face the right direction, they support each other and lean out of the frame without falling into separate pieces. Occasionally someone will pick up the frame to examine the workmanship, but if the person puts the hearts back in facing the wrong direction, the slightest bump sends the pieces scattering.

Back again?  So glad you came!  Here's the eighth devotional in my series on woodworking.

My cousin built a little desk made of solid cherry wood. Soft pine would have been easier to carve, but when a pen pressed down on the writing surface, a dent would remain. The cherry wood's hard surface resists the pressure of a ballpoint.

Hardness can be a positive quality, like firmness in a moral principle. But sometimes we harden our hearts to God's direction.

Here's the seventh in my series of devotionals on woodworking.  The rest of this series can be found on my author page!  Enjoy!

Every piece of wood has a will of its own, a unique grain. A skilled woodworker will examine a piece of wood carefully to ascertain the direction of the grain and then go with the grain. To ignore the natural tendency of the wood could spell disaster for a project.

God our Father knows that each of us has a will of our own...

Welcome back!  Here is the sixth in my devotional series on  woodworking.  Enjoy!

My cousin discovered a treasure. He found wonderful pieces of air-dried walnut wood lying forgotten in a neighbor's barn. To the neighbor, the wood represented old logs with little value, but my cousin took them home, scraped off the bark and transformed them into unique Shaker-style side tables that sell for hundreds of dollars apiece!

Like my cousin looking at the wood, God looks on each of us and sees the real value hidden behind our warts and bumps.

The fifth in my series of devotionals on woodworking. Keep coming back because there are lots more to come!

My cousin presented one of his handmade salad bowls to me last Christmas. How I treasure it! Every time I take it down from the shelf and serve guests, I think of him. But David also sells his wares at craft shows. Though each piece has his name engraved on the bottom, the people who buy those pieces, more often than not, never give another thought to the person who made their bowl or desk or chair. Why do I remember him but they forget? I have a personal relationship with my cousin while these other people do not.

When God made man and woman, he stamped us with his image.

The fourth in my series of devotionals on woodworking...thanks for coming back!

Years ago, my husband and I bought a table. To our inexperienced eyes it looked well made. We were told it was solid oak. But when my cousin David looked it over, he pointed out that while the chairs were indeed solid oak, the table only had a veneer of oak. Things are not always as they appear!

What a contrast to Jesus who is the real thing. He doesn’t have just a veneer of divinity, appearing to do miracles. He healed the leper, he raised the dead, he forgave sins. He is God all the way through. Some people want to believe that he was made of lesser stuff, that he was only a great teacher. But Jesus doesn’t give us that option. According to John 14:6, he said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” Do truly great teachers lie? If Jesus is a great teacher, then we must accept his words at face value. I may not know real wood from a veneer, but I am convinced that Jesus is who he said he was: the Son of God.

What about your own faith? Is it only a veneer or does it reflect the depths of your heart? Who do you think Jesus is? How does your answer impact your actions?

Lord, only you know for sure what is in my heart. Rip away anything artificial so that I may live for you alone this day.

Here's the third in my current series of devotionals on woodworking. Keep coming back as I'll be posting a new thought each week!

Where others are talented with tools, I am hopeless when it comes to working with wood. I have no patience or skills. Years ago, I tried to make a three-legged wooden stool as a shop project but it ended up as a boot scraper! My daughter is at the other end of the spectrum. Using equipment at the school shop, she lovingly cut strips of wood from eight different types of trees and formed them into a single mosaic of beauty, a cutting board that I proudly display in my kitchen.

When God told Moses to make the ark for the tabernacle and carve the implements to be used at the altar, God also supplied the people with the skills to accomplish the task. Moses, after all, had been raised as a prince in the palace of Egypt's pharaoh. What did he know about working with his hands? He didn't know a hammer from a chisel!

Here is the second of the new series of devotionals on woodworking.  Enjoy!

My cousin David is a woodworker, so one day when he came to visit, I took him to our local library so he could see samples of the woodworking techniques of a master craftsman named Moses Ransom. Ransom designed complex fretwork in the 19th century, coaxing intricate twists and impossible turns out of ordinary wood. People still travel from miles around to see these rare examples of his work at our library.

God, like Ransom, is a Master craftsman.

This blog entry is the start of a new devotional series for my readers.  I wrote the devotionals some years ago about my cousin and his woodworking hobby.  My cousin now resides in a dementia unit at a nearby nursing home where I am able to visit weekly.  I still pray for him and all my extended family.

One Spring morning, as I sat in my favorite chair with my journal, I prayed that David, a dear cousin, would deepen his relationship with God. Now a small voice said to me, "Why not speak to him in his own language?"

Surprised, I replied, "Lord, he speaks English!"

Our son Tim dropped his high school textbooks on the dining room table and announced, "Mom, Dad, I want to be home schooled."

Ever since second grade, Tim had fumed about school. Our other children were happy in public school, but our oldest child complained that his assignments there kept him busy yet taught few new concepts. Even in the program for gifted students, Tim felt bored. "Mom, we waste so much time each day on rules, hall passes, and parent permission slips."

Now in ninth grade, Tim had just compared his general science homework assignment with that of his sister. Prisca was covering the same material in her fifth grade science class. And Tim’s second-year Spanish class was not much better. In the Spring term the students were still reviewing first-year concepts.

Tim’s complaints were not new. Every year we had offered him alternatives to public school, but he always turned down the suggestion. This time he initiated the discussion.

"Tim," I asked, "on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 represents no interest and 10 represents total commitment to home schooling, where would you put yourself?"

"I'd say I'm about a 9.5."

So there it was. After seven years of toying with the idea, Tim was finally voting for home schooling. We asked Tim to create a list of reasons why he wanted to learn at home. His reasons ranged from academic (“Class time is flexible...we can finish a discussion without worrying about a bell ringing”) to whimsical (“I can come to class barefoot”). That summer, we took the legal steps to start educating him in our home.

Most home schooling families begin with preschool or elementary curriculum. By starting at the high school level, we jumped into the process at a stage when many other families were winding down their at-home programs. While their children were shifting to the traditional classroom, we were just learning about county regulations, log books and portfolios. Home education is popular in our area, but we soon discovered that Tim would be the only high school student being taught at home in our district.

We faced an additional challenge. Most families we knew either sent all their children to public school or taught all their children at home. In our case, however, our other children had no desire to be taught at home. Prisca played the violin and wanted to continue performing with her school orchestra. She participated in school track meets and was on the volleyball team. John wanted to see his friends every day in the classroom. Tim would be the only one of our children to study at home.

Having a family where some children are in the public school setting and others are taught at home was like mixing oil and water. They didn't always blend. The combination presented special challenges.

When bad weather canceled school for his sister and brother, Tim found that home school continued. During that first year, a blizzard released John and Prisca from a whole week of school. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday passed. My oldest son continued studying each day. On Thursday, however, when I went down to wake Tim, I found a carefully arranged pile of white cotton balls outside his bedroom door. A sign taped to the door announced, "Home school canceled due to snow!" I laughed and he spent the morning outside building snow forts and sledding with his sister and brother.

On the other hand, Prisca and John resented Tim having only three or four hours of formal class each day. As a high school student, he did the rest of his work independently. Prisca and John left the house before 8:00 and didn't return until after 3:00. Prisca asked, "How come we have seven hours of school and Tim only has half a day? It's not fair."

But when I offered her the same option of staying home, she quickly affirmed her desire to continue in orchestra and sports.

We learned some lessons the hard way. That first year, Tim skipped classes occasionally when other activities seemed more interesting. Those days were not logged as school days. When summer arrived, Prisca and John enjoyed vacation but Tim still had ten days of school to complete. Studying those last two weeks when Prisca and John were outside playing was agony for my teenager. The next year, Tim finished his required 180 days just before public school released his brother and sister for the summer.

Tim graduated with a Pennsylvania Homeschoolers Association diploma. Because he finished a semester early, he opted to spend six months in Costa Rica as the first home schooler going abroad with the AFS student exchange program. When Tim applied for college, the college asked him to write an essay describing a time when he had to make a big decision. He wrote about his choice to be educated at home.

Prisca and John continued in public school. She and John both starred on their school’s volleyball team. They too graduated and moved on to college.

Sometimes I wondered if my husband and I were right to allow each child to make such major decisions about their education, but our trust was validated as we observed the thoughtful process by which each one considered his or her needs. As a result, each child developed confidence in their ability to make good decisions in the future. They learned to weigh personal needs and the benefits and liabilities of each option. John and Prisca respected Tim's decision to learn at home; he recognized that their choice was different but not wrong. Those were not bad lessons to learn from mixing oil and water!