Every time a tree fell down in our yard, my father would build a new piece of furniture. When the walnut tree by the river was felled by an apocalyptic strike of lighting, I got two bedside tables. The rest of the tree was stacked in the rafters of the garage and for years afterward would intermittently emerge as tables, lamps, benches, even a canoe one spring with painstakingly laid, quarter-inch strips of alternating ash and walnut and a thrice-varnished bow that would glide through the Miles River so quietly you could paddle by the swans in the cove without them unfurling their necks from the warmth of their wings.

My father’s workshop was a place of transformation. It smelled of sweat and wood, dust and stains, kerosene and grease. It was a sanctuary for him and my favorite place to be. It was not, however a place for conversation. My father worked mostly in silence, sometimes with the old transistor playing a mix of Tchaikovsky and static from the distant classical station in Washington DC. His broad shoulders would always be folded over some lathe or table saw, his hands and arms guiding the wood toward its new life. When he noticed I had come in the shop, he would look down at me, wood chips and dirt in the folds of his neck and he would break out into a smile that instantly told me I was not only welcome but a delight to behold. Who makes you feel like that?

He would nod at the old Maple stump by the door and invite me to stay, never turning off the saw or the wheel and continuing his work. There was no way to talk over the noise, and no expectation to carry on conversation; being wanted for just your presence and not a thing you can contribute is a powerful thing. That was the way my father made me feel.

My father always saw beauty in the people and things that others didn’t. He was more than a champion of the underdog, he had an exquisite radar for embers that could still be flamed. God is like that. He takes us when, regardless of how our outsides look, we are sputtering embers on the inside, and blows gently to reignite a flame in us we did not even know needed kindling. He lights up the places in us that give us warmth and direction and purpose and peace. He transforms us from the dead, fallen, broken, apocalyptically struck people that we are and gives us new life, new purpose, new direction, and actual, supernatural transformation. But it’s not a bells and whistles transformation – – it’s an internal rewiring to see our world and our place in it wholly differently. He takes us and repurposes us for His greater work. He does that. No, really, He actually does. By just entering His shop, and being in His presence and learning to know Him, we function, however ungracefully, from a profoundly altered perspective.

I will never forget my father’s face when he would turn and see me at those double doors, standing on the old cement slab. I know that’s how God feels when I show up in prayer, or really tell him what’s going on, or where I am lost and need some knight-in-shining-armor help. It’s how God feels when I open the Bible not to complete some study or check a box but to listen to Him, talking to me personally and giving me some direction to navigate whatever it is I am struggling with at the moment.

My Dad is gone now, and I miss him so much, but that feeling he gave me of being loved and wanted it still there – – present and palpable. It has never gone away. It has, somehow, in me, eternal life. God looks at us in that same way and nods at the stump so we can quit striving and He can start transforming. He’s just so glad when we are there.