Tools Are Like Life?

There's nothing quite like restoring old  tools. In fact it's actually a lot of work to do it right. I like to see a parallel to tool restoration and God working in me. (It's a pretty good analogy in my mind) This afternoon I started resurrecting an old double bit axe head that I dug up in my backyard. (I found it a few years ago when as a little boy I was in a digging phase... it was about 6 feet down. Nothing better for boys than excavation of the earth!) When I started work on it, It had rusted, lost its edge and was just in horrible shape. There was a lot of work to be done in this ax's life  First I clamped it up to my shop bench and pulled out my 4 1/2" 10amp angle grinder and proceeded to remove all the rust covering the iron head. This process is a tedious one since it is fatiguing work. To remove all that unsightly rust requires force and time, not to mention the cloud of dust and sparks coming off the surface. The head heats up if you go to much to fast and then you have to squelch it in H2O to bring it's temperature down. If you over heat the iron, the temper will be lost and that makes the head shot. After the rust is removed with the wire wheel and grinder wheel, the ax looks more presentable, it is still duller than dull. Pretty useless right now, but I'm nowhere near finished. An ax is only as good as it's handle, so this next part is special. My handle of choice for this ax is a 26" straight grained genuine hickory piece. When you first get the handle it does not match the inside of the ax head exactly. In order to have a superior ax they need to fit together like protons and neutron in a atom. (One unit, two parts; unbreakable pretty much due to the strong electron attractive forces. Remember I'm a engineer...) This takes rasping with a rasp on the handle head to match the contours. If you take to much wood off the head will be loose and unusable. After many test fits and reworking I achieved a fit that I was happy with. Mounting the handle is really easy now, you have a head and a handle that fits it perfectly. I slid the head onto the handle and pounded it home, as far as my strength would take it. Now I use two wedges, the wooden one goes in first and fits parallel to the length of the head. The little steel one goes at a 30 degree off the wooden wedge. Drive these down as far as possible and the cut the whole deal above the head off flush. The purpose of these guys is to create pressure on the inside of the ax head so that is does not go flying off when used! Boom. Pow, Shazam' Think? Grin! At this point I was well on my way to being complete.

Sharpening an ax is a tricky art. To fine of an edge and It will become dull quickly. To steep of an edge and it won't cut anything except melted butter. Oh well, I've done a wee bit a sharpening, so I forged ahead. Clamped in my shop vise as started work with my single cut mile bastard file. Swish Swish went my file as I worked the edge up to a point. This honing of the edge that time to right and it's best not to rush it. As I filed away my mind came to Proverbs 27:17 "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." I love that verse and my work rely brought that verse to an even clear meaning. My point of spending all this time talking about restoration of my ax was to be able now to point to a more important parallel.

When God first found me, I was 6 feet under and bound for hell. I was nothing by myself. I was rusted and pitted with sin. My handle was gone and rotted. But my great God started working on me. He dug me out through his one and only son, Christ and brought me out into his shop. There he began to grind and cut the rust of me. Those sparks are indeed painful, but necessary. Even though it hurts, it is like a good pain, as if peeling off dead skin. Then he took me all washed clean by the Blood of Christ and handled me with the straight, strong, and genuine word of God. Currently he is still sharpening away at me, which I hope and pray he will never stop. But there I am, once lost, but now a treasured tool in the Masters hand ready to be used by Him. "Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Philippians 1:6

A thought occurs to me as I wrap this up, and that is even though with a full restored ax; the ax in its self does nothing. Without a master it will just lay there and gather dust and rust and go back to its former past. But with Christ, the Master of Masters, the ax, my life, will not lay there on the bench. He will take up his treasured tool and use it for his glory. Through Him and Him only will chips fly from the ax.