The Crooked Stick

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 3, 1864

The Crooked Stick.

"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 [or piece] 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 expressly for the 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 some—for you to do, and nobody else can do it."

This village carpenter had neither the knowledge of the schoolmen, 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. Thus the warped tree had preached to him a sermon on true humility, and made him from that day an humble steward of the things of the kingdom.—Family Treasury.