Hearts Of Oak (stained)

Monday my friend Wes treated me to breakfast at Ayre’s where we talked about stave churches, sin, and pine boxes.

I’d never heard of a stave church before my e-friend Felisol from Norway posted a photo of one in her blog, On The Far Side Of The Sea at http://felisol.blogspot.com/ . Here’s one of her beautiful photos:

A great article, with lots of photo links, in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stave_church ) tells about these unusual wooden church buildings.

These wooden buildings have lasted over 900 years! The builders saturated the wood posts and planks in tar. They endure.

I wonder if the builders modeled their construction on Viking ships?

Anyhow, as Wes and I talked about sin—mine in particular—he used the analogy of a pine box stained to look like oak. That’s how stave churches entered our conversation.

Let me explain.

In my recent triumph at uploading that fire history book to the printer, almost immediately, instead of thanking God about the completion of that project I began to browse the internet for photos of girls wearing bikinis (or less).

I’ve observed this same pattern in my behavior again and again over the years. I will attempt to live in Christ, enjoy some minor triumph, then fall into squalor quick as peaches through a goose.

And I’m not alone in this.

It was not the wicked, ungodly Philistine giant Goliath who screwed Bathsheba in the bathtub; no, that was David, the man after God’s own heart.

It was not the wicked betrayer Judas who denied Christ said, “I do not know the man”; no, that was Simon Peter, leader of the apostles.

Why is it that guys who want to walk in love with Christ, so often fall into squalid sin? And look at the glee of the world when some preacher leaves his wife and runs off with the choir leader. The media acts as though no electrician or post man had ever done anything of the sort.

Perhaps the world expects to see something different from us Christians.

As well they should.

But, that’s them; this is me.

I am a Christian. So, why do I fall so hard and so often.

At this point in our conversation, Wes brought up white pine boxes.

Among Wes’s many talents is carpentry; he builds stuff. And here in Florida the cheapest, most common wood for any project is soft white pine, a near worthless wood often used for shipping pallets.

Wes likened what Christ does to our souls to a man who builds a box of white pine. After he knocks the thing together, he stains the cheap wood with oak stain.

And, like the tar in those staves in Norway, the oak stain begins to soak into the wood. Deeper and deeper it permeates the pine fibers. The box looks like oak. The only way you’d know it is pine is to cut into it deeper than the stain.

Wes said that at conversion, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell inside a cheap, common human heart. This is a supernatural act of God. The shed blood of Jesus Christ, like a stain, begins to soak in, to color everything about us, till we start to look, on the surface, a bit like Him. By soaking up God, we start to become godly—no credit to us, you understand.

But sometimes, things cut.

Temptation comes.

The cheap common pine shows through.

Not to despair, the oak stain is still soaking in.

Neither David nor Peter (nor John Cowart—nor you) remains the same. Those planks in the stave churches of Norway took 900 years to harden to their present solidity… And God has all eternity to work with us.

The Scripture says, “A new heart will I put within you”.

We shall have hearts of true oak.

The downside of this hope, is that the preserving stain works better when applied under intense pressure—That, I think I can do without, Lord.