Imagine the Master Carpenter’s tools hold a conference:
Brother Hammer is presiding when several protest and suggest he leave the meeting because he is just too noisy. Brother Hammer replies: “If I have to leave this shop, Brother Screw will also have to go. You have to turn him around again and again and again to get him to accomplish anything.”
Brother Screw can’t remain silent. “If you wish, I will leave. But Brother Plane must leave also. All his work is on the surface. His efforts have no depth.”
To this, Brother Plane cannot remain silent. “Brother Rule is always measuring others as though he were the only one who is right. He will also have to withdraw!”
Brother Rule, not to be ignored in this mutual fault-finding, complains about Brother Sandpaper: “He ought to leave, too, because he’s so rough and always rubbing others the wrong way.”
So goes the discord.
Until the Master Carpenter enters the shop. He has come to start His day’s work. Putting on his apron, he goes to the bench to make a pulpit from which He can proclaim His saving Gospel message. He uses Brothers Hammer, Screw, Plane, Rule, Sandpaper and all the other tools.
After the day’s work, when the pulpit is finished, Brother Saw arises and remarks, “Brethren, I observe that all of us are workers together with the Lord.”
“What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:5-7).
Paul Holland
