My customers are complaining about their woodworking orders. It’s not the usual stuff about quality, prices, or delivery. Ironically, the complaint comes from people I know well. Usually they come from my closest friends and family.
My niece challenged me about the underside of a floor-level shelf on her end table. A friend disagreed with the back of a Shalom sign he ordered- the part that faces the wall. I take pride in these protests have no intention of changing. If they want to work with me, they will have to learn to accept these things as they are.
My trademark feature is at the heart of their complaint. It is applied after the work is complete and is my favorite part of woodworking. I don’t mean the clearly engraved “Mc” logo. My trademarks are harder to find because I hide them.
My niece discovered an Irish blessing when she removed her shelf and flipped it over. Etched in a Celtic font were the words:
May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face; the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
I copied it from a needlepoint that my Mom kept in the hallway of our home. She has departed, but the family still cherishes her memory. After much deliberation I chose those words especially for my niece. They are proudly featured on the bottom of a shelf no one can see.
She believed the blessing deserved a more prominent display.
I disagreed.
If you turn over one of my Shalom signs then you find a blessing offered by the apostle Jude in an open letter sent to Christ-followers.
May mercy, shalom, and love be multiplied to you.
Kim and I went back and forth for an entire evening trying to pick the precise sentiment. It is my spoken prayer as I let my peace rest on every home that hangs it above their doorpost.
My friend thought it should be a highlighted part of the sign.
I disagreed.
There are other examples. Many of my pieces hide a message from the world but intend it for the recipient. I choose the words after careful deliberation. They may be a scripture, familiar verse, or just something I wrote. Each is my prayer for that specific person.
I call them the Hidden Things.
The Hidden Things don’t belong to the world. I share them with God and a particular person or family. They are the treasure of my work – my private hopes. They aren’t clever or funny, rather my simple petition to a Father who adores us. I hide them to emphasize that the sentiment is real.
The bottom of Kim’s coffee table
Some things are special because they are secret. These aren’t fortune cookies that you can buy a bag at a time. After much deliberation, I select them and present them to God on your behalf. I believe that He honors these requests by reading them aloud and speaking them into reality.
God does the same thing with us. He speaks in soft voices that we have to lean in to hear. He hides truths inside parables for us to discover. He visits us in dreams. The thrill of uncovering a Hidden Thing is to learn the very heart of God.
Exposing myself to criticism about my abilities as a woodworking craftsman is difficult. However, that is easy compared to letting down my guard with a message that arose from my soul. When the reward for my efforts is an eye roll, mockery, or being ignored – it is painful. If they don’t care, then I feel small. But when it sparks a deeper connection, every risk is worthwhile.
One day, someone will unwrap a piece that I have spent weeks building and without paying attention to what it is, will immediately ask for help flipping it over to search for the Hidden Thing.
On that day, I will know that I’ve shared my heart.
Making Waves is my commitment to take big risks, to be vulnerable, and to contemplate new ways to love God and my neighbor. The Hidden Things are like a post written for only one person.
I invite you to share Hidden Things, whether they are carved into furniture, tucked into a lunchbag, or scribbled on a postcard. The authenticity of the emotion behind the gesture is all that matters.
Perhaps we can find each other and a connection to God in our search for Hidden Things.
As I’ve grown older, my life seasons have changed. As the seasons have changed, so have the things that occupy my time.
When I was a parent of young children, most of my time was spent watching over and teaching them. As they grew up and moved out of the house, they didn’t need me in the same way. If I had continued to treat them as toddlers it would not have been productive, or in Bible-speak it would not have been fruitful. That part of my life needed to be pruned, but it had been a happy time, and I knew I would miss it.
Similarly, I have served for years in a specific ministry only to be later called into a different direction. God’s calling into a change was clear. Holding onto a particular area that had previously received his blessing was no longer good. It took time to change course, ending one ministry well and then starting the next. The previous part of my life needed to be pruned, but I worried what would happen to the former ministry after I was gone.
It is difficult to make these changes but not difficult to explain my reluctance. Either I am happy with the status quo, or I don’t trust God to take care of the things I leave behind. Regardless of which it is, I resisted change.
Sometimes the Bible’s references to pruning confused my feelings further. John chapter 15 evokes images of casting pruned branches into an eternal fire, while Mark 11 tells about Jesus cursing an entire tree to wither and die because its branches weren’t fruitful. These responses seemed severe for my challenges in changing my parenting style or handing off a ministry.
Recently, I learned about a different example of pruning – more of a symbol of a proactive and constant effort to stay aligned with God’s will for my life – voluntarily letting go of one thing to embrace something better.
The olive tree provides a beautiful illustration of this type of pruning. Olive trees are one of the longest living trees in the world. Some have been alive since Christ walked the earth. They live and bear fruit for centuries or even millenia. However the individual branches are not productive for that long. Eventually, each olive branch stops producing fruit and that branch needs to be removed so that the tree can thrive.
However when the branch is pruned, it isn’t abandoned or cast into a fire. God’s blessing on that branch continues, even after it is removed from the tree.
Most people don’t know that olivewood rarely comes from cutting down a tree. The trees are far too valuable for that purpose. Olivewood is harvested during the pruning season from cut branches that no longer produce fruit. They are gathered and slowly but carefully converted into one of the most beautiful, expensive, and prized types of wood in the world.
Photo by Davies Designs Studio on Unsplash
Olivewood has beautifully figured grain and is incredibly dense and hard. The finest wooden kitchen utensils are produced from olivewood. A few exquisite pieces of furniture justify the expense. Some of the finest carvings in the world started from a pruned branch.
In 1st Kings chapter 6, we learn that when King Solomon built the temple, he placed inside the holy of holies a pair of winged cherubim who stood vigil over the ark of the covenant. He chose to carve them from – you guessed it – olivewood.
Removing a non-fruitbearing branch isn’t punishment for a tree, or an admission of disappointment in its performance. Instead, it is part of a natural cycle that allows the tree to thrive while the branch releases a special beauty that it otherwise could not. If this were not true, would God have allowed a fruitless branch to become a guardian angel in his home?
Pruned branches will never be a substitute for a fruitful life. However if they are carefully removed at the right time and turned back over to God, then he can do wonderful things with them. They can still be a blessing. They become visible evidence of God’s invisible qualities and continue to point us back to Him.
Thriving trees produce pruned branches. It is all part of a life of Shalom spent releasing and expanding as we rest in the Father’s arms.
If you are interested in seeing products that I make from olivewood, please click on the link below to look at the Shalom Door Post Signs. They are made from olivewood grown in the Holy Land that ships to me directly from Bethlehem, Israel. The word Shalom is laser engraved in Hebrew characters on one side as a declaration of peace over your home, while the other side includes a scriptural blessing.
Maybe it will also remind you that God can do something magnificent when you release a portion of your life to him.
