My fascination with fasteners

“The LORD will make good his purpose for me; O LORD, your love endures forever.” Psalm 138:9

I don’t know why I try to be a DIY guy at home. My skill, my charism, if I’ve got one, is putting words together, not wood. I should know better than to try, and yet what is one to do in retirement but try to develop skills that God, in God’s infinite wisdom, gave to others but (apparently) not to me? I work for a Jewish carpenter, but even the Great Healer knows better than to put power tools into my hands.

That’s OK. I’ve got time to kill and decent medical insurance, so why farm out work that doesn’t require the strength of Samson (or his hair)? I don’t mind hiring folks to do big jobs that really are beyond my capacity to do them, but for little things, I like the challenge. I know I haven’t got the hands-on experience of real carpenters or people in the trades, but I’ve got YouTube. What could go wrong?

Case in point this week was my goal to build a box step for the front of our shed. Its entry is about a foot above ground level; several years ago I’d set up a temporary platform out of landscaping timbers and concrete pavers. They worked just fine, but looked like something Laurel and Hardy (or the original MacGuyver) would have installed. I wanted to build something more Taj Mahal than Slip ‘n Slide. What could be simpler than framing a box and topping it with cedar deck-boards?

I zipped down to the local big box store, acquired the lumber I would need, and “fasteners.” I guess they don’t call them screws any more as people got tired of screwing up their projects (and Lord knows I’ve got a screw loose – or two). So now they’re called fasteners, which I find fascinating.

I decided against using nails as I have seen what happens when I use a hammer, and it ain’t a pretty sight. I have good medical insurance, but my agent tells me the policy doesn’t cover self-inflicted blunt force trauma. Besides, I haven’t got enough years left in me for the time it would take me to actually nail a box together. So, “Screw it,” I said to myself, and for once I listened.

By the end of a week, I had cut all my lumber to length, then assembled, disassembled, and reassembled my box base and set it in place. Sadly, I haven’t figured how to attach it to the shed yet, but I’m working on it. It’s a work in progress and I’m agile enough to step over the box and into the shed in the interim.

Life is a work in progress. I know my strengths and limitations and don’t mind acknowledging what I’m good at and what I’m not. I think people are sometimes too ashamed to admit they’re not good at something, as if their worth is based upon their skills (or lack thereof). It has taken me a long time to actually believe what I have been preaching about all my life – that God is love, and that God embraces each and every person.

I have wasted a lot of time suspecting that there are some people far too bad to deserve God’s love, but then one day it dawned on me that if there are exceptions, then why wouldn’t that apply to me, as well? If there are exceptions, then none of us is safe from God’s wrath. All of us have failed to live up to our billing as God’s children, yet God has set a place for each of us at God’s table, in God’s house. Jesus was a carpenter, the son of a carpenter. He knows a thing or two about building tables because he no doubt actually built a table or two.

I know what needs to be done to finish the step to my shed. I really do. It’s no mystery. It’s a project. Just like life is a project. My hope is that, at the end, God will look to see what I’ve become and say, “You nailed it!” That’s my hope for each of you, too, in this, our valley.

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)