Learning to Work With Life’s Raw Materials

Imagine for a moment that you just walked into a master craftsman’s woodshop. Pieces of raw wood are stacked neatly on shelves, and the smell of sawdust fills your nostrils as you enter. You step over a few wood scraps of wood on the floor, and you see more pieces with fresh cuts laid out across a large workbench. The room is filled with equipment — some are hand tools, and others are electric. There’s an old boombox in the back corner, and the sound of seventies rock wanders through the space.

Sitting in the back corner of the shop, you see one of the most beautiful wooden tables you’ve ever laid eyes on. Its lines are bold and strong, and as you walk toward it, you can see that every detail of this piece has been meticulously created. The joints are perfectly fabricated, the cuts are exact and crisp, and the wood is finished in a way that accentuates the wood’s natural grain and beauty.

This table didn’t fall out of a tree ready-made. Instead, the craftsman took those raw materials off the shelves and spent hours working with them until they had assembled this beautiful table. They spent time visioning what this table would look like. They selected the perfect pieces of rough-cut wood to create their masterpiece. They stayed in the shop late at night, working by hand to get every detail just right. They carefully put each piece together…