Mood:  a-ok

A fellow blogging friend of mine from over at Homeschooling Hearts and Minds has begun a new meme this week as well...AND, she even thought of me and designed a blog button that wasn't too feminine! It's called Tuesday's Toolbox and it invites bloggers to blog about a common household object that can also be a teaching tool. You can click on the above picture to find out more about it and read what some of the items are for this week. I thought it was a great idea, so I wanted to be involved. And my first toolbox item is...

WOOD!

Any item made of wood will do. Even a wooden pencil will work. I have used this as a teaching tool to explain why it is important to study. I've also used it as an object lesson to talk about how God has to reform us in order for us to be a useful tool for His use.

Let's use the pencil for an example. You see, this pencil didn't begin as a useful object...it began as a tree. If you would have asked the tree if it wanted to be cut down it would have said "NO!" right away. It didn't realize that although God can use anything in it's natural form if He wants, He often has to refine us and shape us in order to make us into something beautiful and useful for His work. The tree would have to be cut down, sawed into pieces, shaped, sanded, and painted in order to be turned into a pencil. If the wood could speak, I'm sure it would tell us that it was a very painful experience. It's not easy to be refined into something that we don't want to be shaped into. But, the Master Potter knows what we need to go through in order for us to be valuable to Him.

The athletic saying "No pain, no gain" is very true. In order to be the best that we can be, we usually have to go through much pain. It's not easy to be an A Honor Roll scholar or a star athlete. You have to sacrifice to reach your goals. Sometimes you have to go through many failures before you gain the success. It's not easy being a child of God either. But, if we want to be the best that we can be for Jesus, then we have to realize there is going to be some pain along the way. Just as the wood became beautiful and useful in the end, so we will become beautiful and useful to God...and the rewards are out of this world!

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