Sabbath Devotional: Creating a Hollow Space for God to Fill

For several years, I co-ran a nature education outdoor school for kids and teens. Our school year program culminated in a week-long campout in the mountains with all kinds of challenges, nature crafts and campfire programs. One week-long craft campers of all knife-certified ages did was carve a spoon from a block of wood. Carving something very cylindrical, narrow and delicate from a chunky block of wood is not totally intuitive. I’ll explain it just as I taught it. First, draw the outline of the spoon you want to create on your wood block. Next, for 3-5 days, slowly carve away small strips of the wood until your outline is a reality!

Let’s detour and talk about how to carve wood. The process of carving always happens on edges. Every time you carve a strip from your wood block, two new edges are created, one on each side of your cut, giving you two new opportunities to carve a new set of edges, which then multiplies. Carving is slow, methodical and careful. You must pay attention to the direction of the grain and carve with it otherwise your cuts will be jagged small pieces instead of smooth strips.

The last step in carving a spoon is to hollow out the center so that it can be used as an eating utensil. There are several options to achieve this:

• Carefully whittle back and forth using the rounded portion of the knife blade.

• Use a series of small cuts and rough sandpaper to achieve a bowl like center.

• Set a coal from an hours old fire into the center and allow slow burn to create the hollow. Repeat and repeat until the desired hollow is slowly created.

None of these ways is better, it’s the preference of the carver based on the patience, time and tools available to assist. Finally, when a hollow is sufficiently created the carver must use a set of progressively finer sandpaper to smooth the whole spoon so that it can be used in a splinter free way! A bonus step is to rub mineral oil onto the carved spoon to preserve the wood and really make it shine.

Now that I have walked you through this carving, hollowing and finishing process for making a spoon from a chunk of wood, I’d like to tell you about my personal hollowing experience. A series of very human events has turned my block-of-wood-with-some-small-cuts discipleship experience into a roughly hewn spoon. So much carving needed to be done to shape me into a resilient tool for God’s use. God carves with the grain, and on the edges to achieve the necessary design but it is still painful and slow to become something where I have been so used to just being. Some of the things God has been carving away are justified judgment of others — especially the people I love the most, transactional obedience, and effort-filled instead of faith-filled discipleship. More recently my center — my soul — needed to hollow out the anger, resentment and betrayal I have held a tight grip on. God has been using all of the techniques to get me to let go of prideful emotions and slowly the hot coals of love, the back and forth whittle of forgiveness and the small cuts that grace are creating have been carving out a usefulness in me so that I can be a new tool for God; carved, whittled, sanded and burned into something much more useful that a chopped (not in the teen sense!) block.

My block-of-wood self was still good, but it wasn’t a spoon. It could be used for propping open a door (being a great welcoming friend), propping up something that is uneven (being a voice of balance in divided places) and adding weight to hold down a page (reliable and trustworthy)! But God needs me to do something different now; to hold and fill myself and others in need of nourishment in a way only a spoon can do.

Back to nature camp. . .. Our group of spoon-carving campers celebrated a week of steady, carving work with a celebratory, last morning meal of a cereal buffet eaten with the spoons! The campers found out pretty quickly if enough time had been spent hollowing out the center of their tool. Some had spoons that could hold one piece of cereal but no milk, some the tiniest of sips and bits and others had created a hearty hollow that would truly fill their bellies with sugary goodness.

I am seeing now that all of this change from God is turning me into a tool that can be filled with something very useful. Over and over, with the thousands of cuts and shaves, the refining and shaping, God has shown me that I need to be transformed so that I can hold love; God’s Love. The love that nourishes, fills with joy and restores strengths to myself and to others. The love that allows space for being truly curious about how others are forging their paths back home, even if very different than my own. Love that extends mercy, grace and forgiveness more quickly. The most valuable lesson that I have learned is that love takes up less space than pride and that means I have a bigger hollow space to fill with love.

Maybe you’d like to carve a spoon this summer and think about what new shape God is inviting you into. Here is a simple tutorial and my favorite bushcraft knife. I’d love to see pictures from anyone who creates a simple spoon and to hear what you learned in this slow, shaping process. Better yet, gather some family or friends and work on your spoons outside together and enjoy a bowl of cereal when you finish!

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(My first carved spoon and preferred tools)