When my father died, I took a lot of the wood he had gathered over the years, and have been using it in various low-level projects since then. This week has seen a further venture take shape; a screen or frame, which will go in the garden- I hesitate to use the word 'adorn';- and which I hope will enable climbers such as sweet peas to thrive as they scramble up it.
The garage has echoed to the sound of a saw and a hammer; the frame, inelegant but I hope sturdy and fit for purpose, was made from different bits of wood roughly the same width and depth, but not all quite the same. From a distance no-one will notice this roughness- I hope. The frame may be put in place in the garden this coming week if the weather holds. It will be next summer before it comes into use, however, as sweet peas and maybe a clematis, ramble through it.
If only life had that consistency and smooth perfection which we all hope for! Instead, I suspect it has a cobbled together feel about it- at least at times- as new stuff has come our way, and we have incorporated it into what is already there. Few of us will have had a 'life-plan' at primary school, and realised it without any hitches, in just the way we envisaged back then.
But it's in this stuff-of-life, stuff-to-hand, that God is found. That is the point of the incarnation, of Jesus becoming flesh, human; that the material of life is important, and can be put to holy use, or at least 'use'. Sawing and hammering as I was, something new emerged; I was engaged in a creative act, and I felt somehow enlarged by this. In creating, after all is said and done, we imitate the Creator and His work. In small, I know. Imperfect, I know. But it is a reflection of a God-like activity.
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