A Divine Symphony in a Forest of Ash

Back in the spring I was re-aquainted with a distant relation at a small family gathering. He was eighty-ish, but he had a twinkle in his eye and he was contagiously enthusiastic about whatever he talked about. He could breathe life and interest into something as dull as stamp collecting and actually make you want to do it because he was so interesting about it. (Just made that up - he wasn't into stamps.)

He took a real interest in me for some reason, and asked me a bunch of questions about what I did and so on. When I told him that I was working at a cabinet shop, his response was, "Oh, well, then you're quite lucky. . ." Apparently he loved working with wood (and he told me about it).

In the midst of our conversation, he interrupted himself and asked me if ash trees grew in this area. As far as I knew they didn't and I told him so to which he seemed slightly disappointed. And then he dropped it. A bit random.

That was a Sunday afternoon. The next day at work, during morning coffee break, we were all sitting together outside enjoying the spring sunshine in silence, and one of my co-workers tells us that over the weekend he cut down a couple of big ash trees on his property. He said that if they were sawed up into lumber he probably could have got a couple thousand dollars for them but he just cut them up into firewood.

Up to that point at the shop I had never worked with ash, never heard anything about ash, never anything ash. I was introduced to ash when I was 9 or 10 when I sawed off the end of my hockey stick and liked the smell of it. My dad told me, "that's ash." A favourable impression indeed, but in all the years in between then and now I've rarely ever come across it. Truth be told, I don't even know what an ash tree looks like.

And now in two days, it was brought up randomly in conversation by someone I barely knew and the next day his question was answered in a strange way by someone I worked with. And I started to think that perhaps God was fixing to say something to me, or at the very least get my attention.

At the shop the day after that, I went through a big pile of mouldings looking for a piece of hickory. After rummaging around for quite a while I found a piece that looked like it might be, and I hauled it out only to be told, "No, that's ash."

Three days in a row. Strange. Remarkable. But if it was God I had no sweet clue what he was trying to tell me. And then the ash instances ceased. And I thought that even though I hadn't discerned a divine message - - as far as scripture and my own experience has shown, this whole scenario fits the bill in terms of how God speaks sometimes. So I thought about writing about it and using it as an example - - like, this is like how God speaks.

And how is that? Dynamically, dimensionally. I wrote recently about the limits of language . . . we are limited in ours, but God is not. He speaks through time and space, through people, through inanimate objects, through donkeys. Sometimes he speaks through coincidence upon coincidence to the point where, if you tried to calculate the odds of them happening you wouldn't be able to ("psssssst. Hey! That's infinity to one . . . Did you hear that? I-n-f-i-n-i-t-y . . . that's right . . . over here . . . it's me, God, trying to get your attention.")

A month later we manufactured an ash kitchen. The first and only ash I've ever worked with in the two years I've been there.

A few years ago I was given a walking stick by a member of the Christian Farmer's Association who share the good news about what Jesus has done to people at fair's and tractor pulls and whatnot, and then give them a walking stick with those salvation-story beads threaded through the handle as a free gift. I still have it in my office/den/whatever-this-room-is. Last week I noticed that it was made of ash.

This past Monday at lunch Kristy was telling me about her devotional time that morning. Following her bible reading program - she was set to read Mark 6 . . . for some reason skeptical about Mark that morning "ok, what's Mark going to have this morning, anyway?" Rising to the skepticism - Mark had much to say.

"And [Jesus] called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff - no bread, no bag, no money in their belts . . . " (Mark 6:7-8)

Immediately I thought of my ash walking stick.

Yesterday (Tuesday) Kristy and I visited my parents. They had us over for dinner and we spent the evening together having a nice visit - during which, I shared my re-occurring ash story.

Then, this morning at work a package is delivered. Any guesses? A single ash door. (A replacement for that ash kitchen we did a while back.)

SO. Let's tie this all together. At this point I have started discerning a few things God is trying to tell me. I believe that God is speaking to me, not just one thing, but a few things. What they are is beside the point (of this post), what is not is "I believe." Faith is key - it's like the grammar that unlocks God's dynamic speech.

Now, there are lot's of different ways God speaks. Question: How does God speak? Answer: However he wants. My experience: sometimes he speaks dynamically and dimensionally using time and space like I've been talking about, sometimes he is direct and to the point. Often I've noticed that when he wants me to do something, it's like he stamps whatever the directive is in my mind or on my heart all at once.

But then I've also noticed that when he speaks about what he is going to do - he tends to take this dynamic, dimensional approach. Think: Old Testament prophecy. Think: callings. Why? The speech matches the action it describes. A lot of times it seems like God isn't doing anything, when in fact his actions and workings are never isolated events, but are a part of a huge tapestry of interrelated, intertwined, salvation events.

Jesus said to them, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." (John 5:17)