"I'm going to speak my mind because I have nothing to lose."--S.I. Hayakawa
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Saturday, May 7, 2016

Jesus and the Firewood


Moose don’t eat spruce.   The only interaction between moose and a spruce is during hunting season when a moose with a 60-inch rack steps behind a spruce and disappears into a black hole, never to be seen again until hunting season is over and it strolls casually through your yard.




Nor do moose eat hemlock.   Or those things we call cottonwood but are really balsam poplar.



Moose do like birch.   And willow.   Also any ornamental trees or bushes you’ve planted, the flowers and the vegetables growing in your garden, as well as any Jack-o-Lanterns you’ve set outside.

But not spruce.  So, in its wisdom, the US Forest Service decided to welcome more moose into the area by clearing a large swath of land not far from where I live.   The spruce and hemlock and many of the cottonwoods were all but clear-cut.    A bunch of birch were cut, too, but many were left to propagate little birches which the moose really like, all in the interests of enhancing moose habitat.

Not many spruce were left.   Just a few, and those were skinny enough that no hunting season black holes could lurk behind them.


All this chopping down of trees resulted in gazillions of tree trunks, shorn of their branches, all laid side by side in nice decks where you can drive your truck right up to them and cut them into rounds with your handy Stihl 024 Wood Boss chainsaw. Which is what I was doing yesterday and today.




 
One of many decks.


 


 
But yesterday is what I want to tell you about.

In between rain showers, and sometimes during them, I cut round after round of spruce and birch and loaded them into the back of my mid-sized, short-bed pickup.  By the time I’d half-filled the bed of the truck, I was once again having one of those when-are-you-going-to-start-acting-your-age conversations with myself.  This was accompanied by heavy breathing of the exhausted kind, bottles of water, and leaning on the tailgate, all while surveying the pile of cut rounds that needed to be lifted into the truck, which by now seemed to me to be getting higher and higher off the ground as the rounds of wood lay on the ground gaining weight by the second.

A truck full of firewood passed me, and we exchanged waves.   It stopped about 50 feet away and two guys got out.





About what I'd accomplished before the miracle struck.






“Would you like us to help load your truck?” one of them asked.  I looked at all that heavy birch at my feet and said, “YES!   Really?”  I figured they’d pick up all the rounds I’d already cut, but NO!   One man went back to his truck and grabbed his chain saw.



Then, one man cutting, and the other loading my truck, they proceeded to make sure I had a full load.  I was really grateful.   So were my back, my hands, and my shoulders.






When Hill and Micah finished the job.



 
As we stood around shaking hands and introducing ourselves, the older of the two, Hill, said, “You know Jesus loves you, don’t you?”

Man, I figured if that’s what nudged these two Good Samaritans to stop and help out an  old woman, then by golly, He must.   “I saw you here and figured if I helped you out a bit, I could say that,” said Hill.

Hill and Micah, the younger guy, got in their truck and drove off.   I stood there thinking about what Hill had said, how expressions of belief and “Jesus loves you” and even "Merry Christmas" have become almost non-PC these days.  Myself, I figure religion is a personal subject and I choose not to discuss it.



Hill and Micah


 
But who am I to argue about Hill and Micah filling up my truck with firewood, and why they did so.? Far as I’m concerned, Jesus loves them.



And so do I.






Home and in the woodlot.







This is a truck that left before Jesus nudged Hill and Micah to help me.   It has nothing to do with my story.   I just thought it was funny.



Pretty sure he got into the truck once they got off this bumpy dirt road.


8 comments:

  1. Too Too funny. Micah is a chapter in the old testament. Wherewith shall I come before the Lord (The Lord Thy God NOT The Lord Jesus since this is in the old testament). Shall I come before him with thousands of rivers of oil. (and my senior memory just went blank and this is one of my favorite biblical verses) It concludes with words to the effect of ..

    Oh for God's sakes Captain .. Google it ..

    Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old?
    7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
    8 He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

    So to our man Micah I say .. Good work Micah.

    Daily .. DAILY .. including just now I am saying to myself .. "I sure am not what I used to be." So I decided to stay in and relax rather than go out and experience the buses.

    So GOOD ON YOU for taking help. YOU allowed them to give of themselves YOU good soul.

    What a great down-to-earth REAL Post .. Smiles .. Cap and Patti

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  2. YEAH BUT .. Was your poor truck happy with being loaded to the rooftop with all of those enormous and EXTREMELY HEAVY logs? I cringed when I saw it loaded up. I assume you have a power wood splitter in your arsenal of good-things-to-have. Joy .. Cap and Patti ..

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  3. That story proves that there are still a lot of good and caring people in this world, and you deserved some help for the good you do for Alaskan Highways and helping out with the mail.

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  4. What a beautiful story and how wonderful that you were the recipient of good faith from nice young men.

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  5. Thank you Hill and Micah for helping my friend ... the lady who walks MILES along our highways all spring and summer long picking up litter, hundreds of garbage bags full. This is a story of what goes around comes around. It was your turn to receive a good deed Jeanne ... couldn't have happened to a more deserving person. I, too, wondered about the truck handling that weight. Good truck! Good truck! Smiles and love, Patti and Cap

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  6. So did you ever answer Hill's question?

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  7. So did you ever answer Hill's question?

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  8. Oh, I love this story. You knew I would. In our neck of the woods, we sometimes say, (or Buck does, anyway), "POJ!!" when something wonderful and unexpected happens. That's short for "Praise Our Jesus." Those were a couple of great-looking Samaritans.

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