Of Woodpiles and Lobster Traps


It was either a pile of lobster traps or a stack of firewood, and every few kilometers found another one. It was as if the side of the road that extended up the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland was considered by the locals to be one long storage area.

Now, I don’t fully understand why I would care about such inanimate objects, but every time I saw one of those piles, I was struck with a sense of forlorn. It was as if I could “feel” a loneliness and abandonment about them, and I couldn’t stop myself from putting myself into their predicament.

Take the firewood, for instance. Each stove-length log was once part of a living tree. Someone came along, cut it down, and hauled it over snow and ice to a pile on the side of the road where it was stacked tee-pee style until it dried. Then it was chopped to stove length, split to exactly the right width and stacked in neat rows of 4’ x 8’ x 18”—the perfect face cord. Some of the wood would later be hauled to someone’s woodshed or wood pile, but judging by the grayness of the logs, it was apparent that some of them had been on the side of the road for several seasons!

And what about the lobster traps—wood, carefully cut and fitted together, only to be used for a short season once a year and then to be stacked along the side of the road, weathering the ice and snow and pounding winds until the next lobster season arrived.

Maybe I could identify with them so well because sometimes I feel that I have been abandoned on the side of the road and left to weather! I know God is going to use me mightily. He has told me He would. But sometimes it seems that the promise will never be fulfilled. Why would God go to all the trouble to promise me something, go to all the effort to shape me into something He can use, when all I do is wait?

Can you relate? Maybe you are waiting for that job God promised you. Or maybe you are waiting for the healing. Or perhaps God has told you that you will do a work for Him, but there aren’t any signs of it starting up any time soon! Maybe God promised you would be a mighty missionary in China, but you can’t get anyone to sponsor you and you don’t have the money to go on your own. Or maybe God has told you He will use your voice to His glory, but all you do at the moment is sing in a small church choir.

The good news for the firewood and lobster traps is that when the time is right, they WILL be put to GOOD use! One to warm a fisherman’s home, the other to provide his livelihood. And the good news for you and I is that when God’s time is right, He WILL keep His promises! In the meantime, while we continue to “weather”, let’s remember that “there IS a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven!” (Eccl 3:1)

Lyn Chaffart

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