Green Wood

One of my earliest memories is excitedly climbing up onto a pile of wood slabs and throwing them one by one through the coal chute opening into the basement of our house.  We moved from that house when I was six years old and I well remember the day that the workmen installed the ultra-modern oil furnace in that house.  As I consider both memories, I suspect that I was four or five years of age when I began to work with wood.  I loved to move and pile the wood, not just because I got to help and be with my father, but because deep down I truly enjoyed the process of dealing with wood for the purpose of heat.  I didn’t know that fact then, but within one year of owning a home, we burned wood for supplemental heat and continued to do so in every one of our future homes.  My love affair with wood heat has gone on for thirty-eight years.  My obsession has necessarily been replaced, due to my recent inability to keep up with the much loved labour, with more modern forms of central heating; namely, natural gas and electricity. 

I truly love the smell of seasoned wood in the woodshed and indeed the aroma of just a wisp of smoke from a good fire.  The heat produced is like no other.  It is pervasive, heats every part of the home and creates a comfort like no other fuel.  Of course the beauty of an open flame held captive in your home is a very primitive pleasure.  I actually dreamed that in retirement I could heat a home with wood.

For the last six years of our lives, the Lord allowed me that pleasure and we were able to heat our country lakeside home with wood heat.  We possessed a modern wood furnace as well as a large two sided old fashioned stone fireplace.  I loved, while I was able, to split and pile twenty cords of wood late in the spring of each year.  The purchased birch would arrive in front of our woodshed in a very green form.  By green I mean that it was full of sap and not suitable for burning at all.  The moisture in the freshly cut wood prevents it from burning properly and indeed the smoke created from burning green wood can result in the build-up of dangerous creosote in the chimney.  By splitting and piling in the open ended woodshed this vast amount of wood, we were able to provide four or five months of curing of the wood.  During the warm summer and fall days the wood dried out so that it could be burned with efficiency and safety.  There is a short, but fascinating statement attributed to Jesus in the twenty-third chapter of Luke that speaks of green and dry wood.  To put it in context, let us start at verse 28.

28 But Jesus, turning to them, said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.

 29 “For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which never nursed!’

 30 “Then they will begin ‘to say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’

 31 “For if they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?”  Luke 23: 28-31

I find these four verses to be quite remarkable.  Jesus has spent the previous night and day being brutally dragged through the mock courts of the high priests, Pilate, Herod and back to Pilate.  He had been mocked, beaten, spit upon, and scourged.  Just the chastisement of the whip as wielded by the Roman Soldiers was enough to kill some men before they were crucified.  Jesus is unable to carry his own cross due to his exhaustion and injuries; yet he miraculously stops to speak to a group of women who are lamenting and mourning his tragic end by the side of the road on the way to Calvary.  He is forecasting about thirty-seven years into the future the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman army in the year 70 A.D.  

It is the words in verse 31 that have the most effect on me.  Jesus is several times in the Bible referred to as a tree or a vine.  In this case he is referring to himself as the green wood that is not filled with sap and the promise of life, but green wood that is filled with goodness, grace, innocence, healing and miracles.  This “green wood” is not fit to be cut down for fuel.  Jesus is telling the women and us that if Roman soldiers will do such evil and violence to He who is innocent, just imagine what they will do the the “dry wood” which represents the evil and rebellious inhabitants of Jerusalem.  There is another level to this metaphor.  If God the Father could see fit to so severely punish his innocent son the “green wood” in order to pay for our sins, just imagine what He will do the the “dry wood” which is fit for burning for all of eternity.  

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