HIDDEN WEDGES Spencer W Kimball Published Deseret Book Company 1974 Last night, I lay awake some hours thinking or the problems of the day. Through my office all week hat filed people-wonderful people, but folks bowed down in grief, sorrow, anguish of soul; folks learning repentance through lifes penalties; people frustrated in their marital upsets; in their moral aberrations, in their financial reverses and in their spiritual deficiencies. I wondered why all these frustrations and sorrows in a world intended to be so desirable and happy. As I pondered, I concluded that most of these people were good people basically, but as they traveled along the highway of life, they had found difficulty in staying on the main highway and had deviated in the side roads; they had forgotten promises and covenants; they had forgotten promises and covenants; they had postponed putting into effect the good resolutions which were determined by them in their sober moments. They had been selfish and they had procrastinated. And my mind wandered back to a childhood experience, which seemed to relate to these serious problems of life. When I was a little boy in Arizona, in the red brick home with its large rooms and high ceilings, it was my chore to bring in the wood, which included chips from the woodpile and dry twigs from tree trimmings to keep the home warm, with a wood box always full. The wood range with its six holes, its hot water reservoir, its large oven and big firebox seemed to have an insatiable hunger. Its consumption of wood seemed to me unreasonable when I related to it the playtime I had to give up to supply its hungry mouth. There was also the fireplace that would take chunks and larger-sized logs and the smaller stoves with isinglass fronts in the sitting room and the parlor, which also demanded fuel. The bedrooms were never warm except by the summer heat. We just piled on blankets and quilts for comfortable sleeping. We grew our own wood. From the orchard came the tree trimmings, and having stuck in the ground cottonwood poles, we always had big trees for larger wood. Most of the limbs we hauled in the wagon, but the larger trunks we dragged with the horses to the wood yard, and since they were too large to split with the axe, here was there I used the wedge. Often, as I split the heavy pieces of wood, I remembered the story of Abe Lincolns youth and it comforted me-a little. We started the iron wedge in the log by tapping lightly and then with the sledge hammer and mighty blows, drove it into the heart of the log until it split it wide open. Sometimes, there were cedars from the foothills and mesquite from the desert above the canals, and all gave way into proper-sized pieces of wood when the wedge, the sledgehammer and strong muscles cooperated. And, as I lay sleepless this night reminiscing, there came to my mind an article from the pen of Samuel T. Whitman titled Forgotten Wedges, which stirred me and from which I wish to quote: The ice storm wasnt generally destructive. True, a few wires came down, and there was a sudden jump in accidents along the highway. Walking out of doors became unpleasant and difficult. It was disagreeable weather, but it was easily have borne the weight that formed on its spreading limbs. It was the iron wedge in its heart that caused the damage. The story of the iron wedge began years ago when the white-haired farmer was a lad on his fathers homestead. The sawmill had then only recently been moved from the valley, and the settlers were still finding tools and odd pieces of equipment scattered about where they had been lost or abandoned. On this particular day, it was a faller’s wedge-wide, flat, and heavy, a foot or more long, and splayed from mighty poundings. The path from the south pasture did not pass the woodshed; and, because he was already late for dinner, the lad laid the wedge, edge up, between the limbs of the young walnut tree his father had planted near the front gate, He would take the wedge to the shed right after dinner, or sometime when he was going that way. He truly meant to, but he never did. It was there between the limbs, a little tight, when he attained his manhood. It was there, now firmly gripped, when he married and took over his fathers farm. It was half grown over on the day the threshing crew ate dinner under the tree. A corner of the blade still protruded when he reorganized the yard and left the tree in an out-of-the-way corner. After that, it was forgotten, except at rare intervals. The farmers hair turned white. Old age beckoned just around the corner. Grown in and healed over, the wedge was still in the tree the winter the ice storm came. In the chill silence of that wintry night, with the mist like rain sifting down and freezing where it fell, one of the three major limbs split away from the trunk and crashed to the ground. This so unbalanced the remainder of the top that it, too, split apart and went down. When the storm was over, not a twig of the once-proud tree remained. Early the next morning, the farmer went out to mourn his loss. Wouldnt have had that happen for a thousand dollars, he said. Prettiest tree in the valley, that was. Then his eyes caught sight of something in the splintered ruin. The wedge, he muttered reproachfully. The wedge I found in the south pasture. A glance told him why the tree had fallen. Growing, edge up in the trunk, the wedge had prevented the limb fibers from knitting together, as they should. Forgotten wedges! Hidden weaknesses grown over and invisible, waiting until some winter night to work their ruin. What better symbolizes the presence and the effect of sin in our lives?
Posted on: Sun, 19 Jan 2014 00:58:19 +0000
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