Spiritual Lessons From Tools

Fiskars Bypass Pruning Shears

Last week, my trusty old pair of bypass pruners bit the dust.  After several years of very hard service maintaining trails, keeping runaway roses in check, and cleaning up garden refuse, a small but essential metal projection broke, and upon closer examination, I found the shears to be unrepairable.  I made a trip to the garden store and was amazed by the plethora of gadgets aimed at the American gardening public.  After a few minutes of searching through oversized handles and goofy colors, I found just what I needed, an unadorned and well built set of ambidextrous bypass pruners (pictured above.) 

By the time I arrived back at Briarwood, wife Rebecca was on her way down the long gravel drive to pick up a pizza for supper.  Since I had a few minutes, I decided to try out my new pruners on the overgrowth along the fencerow that parallels the drive.  It was slow going, but each cut was a pleasure which led me to the next.  The balance and mechanism were wonderful, and by the time Rebecca arrived home, I had managed to trim about twenty feet of fenceline.  That leaves just a bit over five hundred feet to do!

In years past, I've pruned that fencerow with electric hedge trimmers.  It always managed to look even and fresh, but it always seemed like a job to be done.  I cannot remember a time when it was a pleasure.  But now, with my Fiskars Bypass Pruning Shears, it was an event- an opportunity to know the farm a bit more intimately.  The slow rythem of the job allowed me to see every bird's nest, to find every honey locust sapling and clip it at the base before it punctured a tire- or worse, a shoe sole.  I noticed the snake skin where it had been shed by its owner earlier in the year, and the slowly decaying skull from some past deer hunt.  It became my choice how far to trim back the sassafras limb peeking through the honeysuckle, and whether or not to leave the wild rose intact for next spring's blooms.  The machine was no longer in control, but I was. 

I've been out twice since that initial outing with my new shears.  The work is a lot slower, but it is much more satisfying.  It is not so much about getting the job done quickly anymore.  Rather it is about the experience of maintaining this little piece of Eden that God has placed into my care.  At the end of the day, I suppose that is something of a parable for life.  We get caught up so readily in measuring our accomplishments that we miss the joy of the job itself.  Perhaps it would be better if we could take the time to enjoy our journey a bit more and concentrate less upon the destiniation.

Oh yes, my thanks go out to the engineers at Fiskars.  You have built a wonderful tool which is a joy to use.