The Woodpile – by Eliezer Gonzalez

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Feb 14, 2016 2966

Sometimes you just have to scratch your head and wonder!

In December last year, our family went on a summer holiday, camping by the beach. We had a wonderful time by the water, in a campground operated in a national park. One of the reasons why we like camping in that place is because the campground provides a huge woodpile so that campers can build fires. Sometimes we cook on the fire, and at other times we just sit around it and look at the stars.

This year I saw how the other men who were camping with their families started fires. Man of them brought axes – sometimes huge ones. They would get wood from the wood pile, and then cut them laboriously into smaller pieces of wood in order to start their fires.

What I couldn’t understand was that the woodpile already contained wood of every size – from bigger pieces to tinder. The work had already been done.

The only reason why I could think that men would laboriously sit there and cut wood was in order to exercise their manliness in proving to themselves that they hadn’t lost their skills for survival in the wild. But it really was an unnecessary thing to do.

It is the same with salvation. Why work for what has already been so freely provided. To prove our worthiness? To prove that we could do it on our own?

At the end of the day, if it feels good, let the men swing their axes and chop wood for the rest of their days. It may have some therapeutic value.

But in terms of salvation, to work for it is to lose it. To work for it is to reject the gift.

We can’t afford to chop the wood that God has already chopped, lest we ourselves become the kindling for the fire.

– Eliezer Gonzalez