Stumped

One of the pleasures of the way we work wood at Out of the Woodwork is that we often see the entire process from the time a tree is felled to the finished project. Reminders of from where the lumber comes is out in the woods in the form of the stumps that generally last for a long time. Six years ago, as part of our forest stewardship plan, we did a thinning cutting and sold the timber. I was reminded of that venture as I looked through some photos from back in that time period and was reminded that although we have nothing to compare to the giant trees on the western part of the country, there are some pretty good sized trees around these parts.

The photo in this post is of the stump of one of the trees that was cut in the thinning cutting. It is a Red Oak and if you blow up the picture you can see that it was close to four feet in diameter. There were a lot of trees taken out of the area where this stump is located and the amazing thing is, if you overlook the stumps you would hardly guess that trees had been removed. That's the purpose of a thinning cutting. By removing harvest-able trees, the ones left behind get larger and tend to fill the openings in the canopy left but their relatives who have moved on to be furniture and firewood. There's no good way to know where the lumber that was part of that big Oak ended it's journey. We can only hope that it served a good purpose and the resulting projects and the craftsmanship that went into them are appreciated as true gifts from our Creator.

The stumps are silent reminders of the way of all living things. Eventually they die. Just as we hope that the lumber from a tree is used wisely and for good purpose, so we must take care to see that our lives also used for good purpose. I truly believe that each person is a creation of God and is created with His purpose in mind. However, we have been given free will and therefore, unlike the tree, we get to choose what purpose we pursue. Also, unlike the tree, we have been assured that when we die we have just begun to live eternally if we believe in God's Son and live like Him in God-honoring purpose. We will not leave stumps behind. But then God has something much better in mind.