The Blacksmith Shop
I remember going to the local blacksmith shop with dad. In those days almost all towns had a blacksmith who plied his skills in iron working. I would watch with keen interest as the man would put a piece of metal into the forge and turn the billows to intensify the heat until it was white-hot. With tongs he would take it to the anvil where with his hammer he would shape it into a useful tool.
Dad built a blacksmith shop on the farm that was used to maintain farm and sawmill tools, and shaping horseshoes for the large draft horses that worked on the farm and in the mountains.
Our shop was not as well equipped as the one in town. However, we had the basics; a forge with billows, a supply of coal, an anvil, vice, hammers, tongs and cutting tools. Dad loved to work in the shop and all of us tried our hand at the anvil. Floyd was the most accomplished smith in our family. I guess, in our shop he was the “master black smith.”
I watched as he repaired a broken chain or sharpen the point of a cant hook with the greatest ease. He would mend all kinds of things and even make something entirely different from a broken tool. When you think about it, almost all things get broken, even humans. Broken tools need to be fixed or remade. At some point, we each and everyone must face the fact that we need the touch of the ”Masters hand.” He alone can take our ruined and broken lives and make us over and make us whole.
In Jeremiah 18, the prophet went down to the potter’s house and watched as he made a vessel of clay on the wheel. It became marred as he formed it and when the potter saw that it would not be useful, he crushed it and made it again into another vessel, beautiful and useful. The Lord, if we allow, will do the same for us when we are marred by our foolish sin and self will. He came to fix the broken. You may have a broken heart. He can fix that too.
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