SAVED TO SERVE

A newspaper picture can say a thousand words.  The Captain, our captain in the field, recently launched from our corps, sat on the curb with her head in her hands as her corps burned in the background.  In tears? In prayer? Both?  She, who had just recently been in the newspaper as the local “Woman of the Year” for her charitable efforts and service to her community was now in the headlines again, in tragedy instead of triumph.

She, who had never been at a loss for words, sat silent.

Blessedly, no one had been hurt.  Only the building was lost.

Some time later, she was back in our corps, sitting with her family.   
    

I thought about how it must be for her small congregation. 

I thought about how it must feel to see the Mercy Seat where I had come to Christ, married my husband and dedicated my children, reduced to ashes.  The place where countless tears of contrition and wordless joy had been shed, all gone.   I would have been devastated.
     

I wanted to console, but could find no words. 
     

When the altar call came, I couldn’t come forward fast enough.  As I knelt in my accustomed spot, I saw the little dark stains where my own tears had fallen, many times before.  I prayed for the right words and for a way to help.
     

 I approached the Captain after Meeting and, instead of the carefully rehearsed “words of consolation” that I had intended to share, bubbling out of my mouth came, “Captain? I’d like to carve something for your new church.” 

She looked puzzled, maybe a little shell-shocked and certainly surprised. 

Heavens!  I was as surprised as she was!  “OK,” she said, and then was engulfed by other members of our congregation who, I was sure, would have something to say that would make more sense than my almost incoherent mumblings. 
     

Well, I had made a commitment.  I shared my intention with my husband, who, God bless him, just shook his head, and accepted gracefully that the house would be full of woodchips for yet another undefined length of time.  We were both a little worried about the cost of the project in time, energy and money, since although good quality carving wood actually DOES “grow on trees,” it’s far from cheap.  I had really got myself into something this time….
    

Well, the following week at the carving school, I was telling the students and instructor about my friend who had lost her church, and the sculpture that I had promised. 

Since I hadn’t checked with my corps officers first, I was on my own. 

As we figured and measured and came up with price for the wood for a medium-sized, free standing sculpture, it was several hundred dollars.   Ouch!  We started again, this time half-size.  Still in the hundreds of dollars.  Table-top size, about two hundred.  Disappointed, I decided I needed think about it some more…. 
     

God is SO good….
    

About  halfway through the class, the owner of the school came up from the mill shop downstairs and said, “I have some logs downstairs somebody gave me.  Walnut and butternut.  Anybody who can cut them up can have them.  I don’t have the room to store them or the time to mill them.”

Wow.  I followed him downstairs and we looked over the wood.  The piece I liked, the main fork of a butternut tree was about four feet tall.  The shape was great, but it was still covered in bark, so I couldn’t really see the wood itself.  Butternut is usually a gorgeous honey-colored wood with a grain like walnut.
    

The carving school donated the log.  As the bark fell off, I could see it was streaked with black and splotches of gray.  It was spalted. The colors come from imperfections and disease, which had eventually killed the tree.  Ah, well, it was disappointing, but the shape was perfect for the picture in my mind and a piece like that would have cost well over a thousand dollars if the wood was healthy and golden.  Besides, aren’t we all a little like that, anyway?
    

The owner of the school felt awful, and offered me a different piece.  He said he could give it to someone else for firewood. 
    

I had a strong feeling that this was just the piece I needed and that no other one would do. 
    

One of the instructors took pity on me and did the basic wood removal with a chainsaw and then the owner of the art gallery where I worked offered to let me use the gallery as a studio during my regular paid work hours. 

A friend with a strong back and a pick-up truck lugged it into the studio. 

God is SO good!
     

I kept track of the progress of the project by making a photo journal. I brought the pictures into our corps from time to time, to show the progress. 

I was having trouble settling on a name for the sculpture, so I asked the corps members for suggestions.  “Saved to Serve” was the result.  It was perfect.  We also decided that it would be a gift from our corps to the Captain’s corps, and made a stained-glass bowl to fit in the hands with the same pattern as our stained-glass windows.
    

It now stands in its place as a welcome and a reminder that we have all been saved to serve.

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