The Tools Are Still Oiled In The Drawer

The drawer opens beautifully.

You made sure of that. The gouges are in order, small through to the wide one, each one in its own slot with the cloth under it. The edges are true. There is a film of oil on the steel that you renewed in the spring, and there is no rust anywhere, and if a man who knew tools opened that drawer he would nod.

And nothing in it has cut wood in about three years.

I want to say the honest thing early, because you already know it and it is better said kindly than left in the dark.

The tending is not the making.

You have been keeping the tools ready for three years, and a person keeping tools ready looks exactly like a person who is about to work. That is what makes it such a good hiding place. Nobody in your house has ever said, why do you sharpen those and never use them. It looks like devotion. Some of it is devotion.

But you and I both know what the sharpening has been doing. It has been paying the rent on the idea of yourself as a man who carves, without ever putting a blade into wood where it could go wrong.

And that is where the real reason sits. Steel that is sharp is steel that has not failed yet. A drawer is a place where nothing has come out badly.

In my family the kitchen was the room, and my grandmother would say a clean pot is a pot that nobody has eaten out of. She was not being cruel. She was saying it while she made a mess of the counter.

Filled with wisdom of heart to do the work

There is a passage in Exodus about the craftsmen of the tabernacle, and it is one of the few places in Scripture where God talks at length about people who make things.

He names the trades. Engraver. Weaver. Embroiderer. The one who devises cunning work. And He says something about all of them that I want you to hear as being said about you, because it is said about people with tools in their hands.

Them hath he filled with wisdom of heart, to work all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver, even of them that do any work, and of those that devise cunning work. (Exodus 35:35, King James Version)

Filled with wisdom of heart, to work.

Not to prepare. Not to maintain. To work. The filling has a purpose attached, and the purpose is the doing.

You have been filled for the doing, and Exodus 35:35 attaches that filling directly to the work rather than to the readiness for it. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a list of tabernacle trades and lays it down on a drawer of oiled gouges in your house tonight.

And look at the last phrase in the verse. Even of them that do any work. Any. Not the best. Not the finest. Any.

You are counted among them that do any work, and it is already settled in the written word that any is the standard. His Spirit is the one who says that over a man who has been holding himself to a much narrower word.

A blade that has not failed has not worked

Here is the thing about a perfectly kept edge, and I say this as somebody who loves a well kept tool.

An edge exists to be used. Wood dulls it. That is not damage, that is the transaction. Every carver who has ever lived has ruined the edge on something in order to make something, and then sat down and put the edge back, and that cycle is what a workshop is.

Your edges are three years fresh because they have not paid for anything.

And the same is true of you. The quality of your carving is not a measure of the man, and neither is the state of your steel, and I would rather see a nicked blade on your bench than a perfect one in a drawer.

You are allowed to blunt a blade tonight, and heaven has never once graded a workman on the condition of his equipment. Exodus 35:35 puts the wisdom in the heart and the purpose in the working, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps those two attached when a man tries to separate them.

And do not go and start something worthy. Do not go looking for a good piece of wood that deserves the first cut in three years. That is the same hiding place with a better view.

You have permission to cut into a scrap, and this is yours to work rather than to keep. It is written that they were filled to do any work, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes any mean any when a man has spent three years narrowing it.

Twenty minutes, and one scrap

So here is the whole ask.

Open the drawer tonight. Take out one gouge, the one your hand goes to, not the one that suits the job. Find a scrap. Offcut, firewood, a bit of pine from a pallet. Cut into it for twenty minutes.

Do not sharpen anything first. That is the trap, and if you sharpen first you will sharpen for twenty minutes and go to bed satisfied and nothing will have happened.

Do not carve a thing. Do not decide it is going to be a spoon or a bird or anything at all. Take material off and see what the wood does.

It will go wrong. You will run into the grain the wrong way and tear it, the way everybody does after a layoff, and there will be a moment where the piece is obviously ruined.

Keep going anyway. Ruined is fine. You are working on firewood.

You are steadied while the first cut goes wrong, and Exodus 35:35 is the ground under that. The written word calls it wisdom of heart put into people for the doing, and the Spirit of God is present at a bench in a garage at half past eight with a torn piece of pine.