The Right Tool for the Job!

As time has allowed, I have been spending the past few weeks working on my raised bed garden project.  With Piper’s health situation I find that I cannot always follow my usual pre-planned daily schedule, so I work on the various projects around our home and property as I am able.  Lately though, I have been free to put in some dedicated time and effort into my garden plans.  After multiple trips to our local Home Depot and with the aid of our oldest daughter, I was finally able to procure all the materials I needed to build and/or attached the right screens and guards to safeguard the planter box from critters coming both on top of the ground and below!

Over the last weekend I set out to build the frames for the screens that will fence in the vegetable garden and quickly got annoyed as I couldn’t find some of the tools I needed for the job… that I knew I had somewhere, in some box… most likely still packed since our move to Oklahoma in 2006!  Well… I finally found my hand saws and began to cut the 2’X8’ boards down to their needed dimensions.  Since I couldn’t find either of my two miter boxes, the cuts were close, but not as straight or accurate as I really would have liked.

Then, as I began to assemble the frames I discovered that I had measured incorrectly and needed to cut some of the boards down an inch or so.  But by then I was getting pretty frustrated and turned to Piper and said “Enough is enough!  I’m going to purchase the compound miter saw that we have talked about for years!”  So, we put everything away and went back into the house where I ordered the miter saw that I had been looking at online.

That action then opened up the need to clear out a spot in garage where I could place the saw and tool table with room to operate it near my workbench and other tools.  Therefore, on Monday I spent the afternoon going through more boxes and then moving many of the items up into the attic.  Yesterday we pulled the car out and did a thorough cleaning and a greater organization of the space.  And since the saw is to be delivered today… we are ready to go… and I can’t wait!  Piper and I talked about getting a table saw in the very early days of our marriage in order to create, produce and then market simple wooden children’s toys.  Now the toys may not come forth, but I am sure that many other projects will see their life through this new tool… the right tool for the job!

Don’t ask me why, but I began to ponder the importance of having the right tool for the job as I was brushing Piper’s hair this morning!  I was remembering how my Dad always seemed to use whatever tools he had at his work bench to do whatever task needed to be accomplished.  He just sort of made the tools he had work for everything.  Therefore the thought of going out and purchasing a special tool to accomplish a particular task was not something that I normally considered in most of my adult years as well… That is until I worked for Home Depot. 

Since I was attending school during the day at the time, I normally worked the late afternoon/evening shifts.  That meant that there were times in the evening, on certain days, when the customer traffic was low and I could check out some of the other departments like Hardware.  I can recall walking down the aisles looking at all the tools and thinking “Oh wow!  I didn’t know they had something like that… that would have made that job a whole lot easier!”  Then I also learned the difference between cheap and inexpensive tools compared to the more expensive but better made ones!  That difference being less frustration when tools either break or don’t quite do all that they are supposed to do, and bruised hands and fingers or sore muscles from having to over-torque things!  It was after these nirvana moments that I began to purchase the better tools that I needed to accomplish specific tasks and learned the significance of having the right tool for the job!

So, after that all flashed across my mind this morning I immediately said to Piper that “As Christians we always have the availability of the right took for the job within the Word of God!”  And I thought about Hebrews 4:12 where the writer of the letter penned: “God’s Word is living and active.  It is sharper than any two-edged sword…” (God’s Word ©)  And the thought of the Word of God being “ACTIVE” just sort of jumped out at me!  You ever have that happen?

It was one of those personal revelations that I’ve mentioned in the last couple of posts.  You see, you may have the Word living in you… but have you put it to work in the situations of your life… Is the Word of God “ACTIVE” in you and your life?  Other translations interpret that word as “powerful, all-efficient or operative.”  But you can see that they all point to the same need for us to actively put the Word to work in our lives!

I recently read somewhere that many people may be full of the Word and faith but are not experiencing the supernatural interventions of God in their lives because they have not yet RELEASHED their faith!  To me, that’s just another way of saying that the Word needs to be ACTIVE in our lives in order to receive the benefits and/or blessings of His promises that God says are ours to participate in. (See 2 Corinthians 1:20)

We’ll talk a little bit about the releasing of our faith in our next blog post… But until then I encourage you to give it some thought.  Is the Word of God both alive and ACTIVE in your life?  Do you have the right tool to do the specific task that confronts you?  You could think of your Bible as being the tool cabinet that hold all the tools you may ever need, but it doesn’t do you any good until you open the drawers, find the right tool and then put it to use!

Have a good rest of the week, and as you do keep asking yourself… “Am I expecting to have the right tool to do the right job in my life today?”