THE WOOD SPLITTER

I was thirteen going on thirty-five, a man of great intellect and great arrogance, and with all the rights and privileges thereof, except, of course, during those times when

my Father was watching.

I was splitting wood for the heater one chilly winter morning while my dad sat in a rocking chair in the sunshine on the front porch.  He was watching. My intellect and my arrogance (and my ignorance) overcame my fear and I threw the ax on the pile of wood. Walking over to where he was rocking I confronted him with all the confidence I could muster, “Why is it, seeing you are about three times my size, that I’m out there chopping the wood and you’re sitting up here on the porch in a rocking chair?”

My dad looked at me sincerely but sternly and answered, “Son, I chopped wood when you couldn’t.  Now you’re going to chop wood because I’m not.” Now since I knew that my dad’s word was law, I tucked in my arrogance, hid as best I could my insult and went back to the woodpile.

It took years for me to properly appreciate the lesson my dad taught me with the woodpile. Nevertheless I became a good wood splitter.  I am still a wood splitter. I made my two sons to be wood splinters and they are making their children to be wood splinters.

How archaic, you say.  How disgustingly homey! Not so, for, you see I finally heard the remaining words of my daddy’s little speech to me, that part he didn’t speak audibly:

“Son, I chopped wood when you couldn’t.  Now you’re going to chop wood because I’m not.  This is so that you can chop wood when I’m gone.”

2 Tim 2:1-2

1 Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

2 And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.

Bobby Norton

Nov 20, 2015