p. 9 | THE CROOKED STICK

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 22, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 51.

THE CROOKED STICK.

“What doth the Lord require of thee?” Micah 6:8.

“Christ has a service for all his members,” said James Therrall, an old carpenter in a village on Salisbury Plain, to a young Christian who complained that she was unworthy to work for the Lord. “Let not one of the members say, ‘The Head has no need of me.’ I used to think as you do long ago, but He taught me otherwise by a crooked stick.

“One day my son went to a sale of timber, and in the lot was a stick so twisted and bent that I spoke sharply to him, saying, ‘You have a bad bargain there, lad; that crooked stick will be of no use to any one.’

“It’s all timber,” replied my son, not the least vexed by my reproof. “I paid the same price for it as the rest. Depend upon it, no tree grows for nothing. Wait a bit; don’t fret, father; let us keep a lookout; there’s a place somewhere for it.”

“A little time after this I had a cottage to build; a queer bit of a house it was, and pretty enough when it was finished; there was a corner to turn in it, and not a stick in the yard would fit. I thought of the crooked one, and fetched it. Many a hard day’s work would have failed to prepare a joist like it. It seemed as if the tree had grown aside for this very purpose.

“Then said I: ‘There’s a place for the crooked stick after all. Then there’s a place for poor James Therrall. Dear Lord, show him the place into which he may fit in building Thy heavenly temple.’ That very day I learned that what God gives me He gives me for His glory, and, poor and unlettered as I was, there was a work for me. There is a work for you; God has something for you to do, and nobody else can do it.”

This village carpenter had neither the knowledge of the schoolman, nor had he taken a

degree at college, yet was he a teacher of divine truths, and he was wise in the wisdom of the children of light. He would often recur to the time when, looking solely on his own weakness and infirmities, he overlooked his only source of strength, and thought he was too poor and ignorant to do anything for the Lord he loved. He lived to a good old age, a blessing to the souls in his neighborhood, and where, as he liked best to say, he watched for his Master. When some who loved their ease too well, or child or servant or sick one complained, “I can do nothing,” he would point to the best-built cottage on the plain, with its pretty bay-window and slanting roof, and tell them he had once thought the same himself, but his error had been corrected by a dumb instructor—a beam in that roof—a crooked stick which seemed fit for nothing; but it found its proper place in the building at last, and gave it a grace and strength which no other timber, however superior in other respects, could have imparted. Thus the warped tree had preached to him a sermon on true humility, and made him from that day a humble steward of the things of the kingdom.

—Anon.