Introduction......................
Is woodworking or any ‘trade’ worth teaching to our
children in today’s society?I have always been interested in how things work and in making things
with my hands. There’s just something extremely satisfying about
building a tangible, useful item with your own two hands. I’ve seen the
same satisfaction in the eyes of my own children. They all three have
completely different personalities but they all enjoy making things. Why
is that? I believe it’s because God made each of us with the desire to
create. God can place a desire in our hearts to create tangible things with
our hands or intangible things using our thoughts and ideas. Both are
equally valuable or God would not have given them to us. But as a
society, we tend to place more value and prestige on working behind a
deskonfactsandfiguresasaCPAorasadoctordiagnosingapatientor
alawyerarguingacaseinfrontofajudgethanacarpenterwhobuildsa
house or a potter who creates a beautiful vase or a plumber who can fix a
leaky faucet or a farmer who grows our food. So our children are
naturally “guided “by our schools and by their parents to study subjects
that will get them a “good job”. We tell ourselves that we only want
what’s best for our children, but do we really? Has God stopped
creating people with the desire to work with their hands or are we doing
our children a great disservice by not letting them become who God
created them to be, whether that is a doctor or a furniture maker. How
many adults do you know who are miserable in their jobs? Would they
be that way if they were using the gifts and talents that God intended for
them to use? My hope and desire is that we as parents take seriously the
responsibility of raising our children to discover who God wants them to
be and not what the world thinks they should be.