The Bend in the Wood

In the hill country outside Asheville, North Carolina, a furniture maker named Harold Rigsby spent forty-three years bending white oak into Windsor chairs. His workshop smelled of sawdust and steam, and he kept a hand-painted sign above his workbench that read, "You cannot rush the grain."

Harold would select green wood — freshly cut, still supple with life — and slowly coax it into shape using steam and patience. He never forced a bend. He worked with the natural grain, honoring the unique character of each piece. "Every board wants to become something," he told his apprentices. "My job is to figure out what."

But Harold also knew timing mattered. Once white oak dries and hardens, it resists shaping. Try to bend seasoned wood and it splinters. The window for forming is brief, and it does not reopen.

When Solomon wrote, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it," he chose a Hebrew word for "train" — chanak — that carries the scent of a craftsman's workshop. It means to dedicate, to initiate, to set the direction while the grain is still green.

Parenting is not mass production. Each child carries a unique grain, placed there by the Creator Himself. The call is not to force our children into shapes we admire, but to study the grain El Shaddai carved into them — and bend gently, while the wood is still willing.