A Sharp Knife

Bear with me as I try to verbalize the analogy that has been going on in my head today. It's been a long and way-too-busy week and my thinking isn't exactly streamlined right now.

I was cutting carrots today for our lunch tomorrow (no, I will NOT forget to turn off the stove this time!!) and the analogy of sharp knives kept running through my mind. This knife that I was using was sooooo dull! I would try to cut the carrot and the whole thing would split into chunks instead of nice, smooth circles. After fighting this for about a half a carrot, I started to think that maybe my knife needed sharpening (do you think maybe?). This was one of those times that I wished I could run over to Grandma's and ask her how to use the sharpening stone that she always used on her knives. Instead, I tried to remember how to use my sharpening rod that came with my knife block. I did what I thought I remembered seeing one time when I actually looked up a demonstration on the Internet to make sure I was doing it right. It didn't seem much sharper, but wow! When I finished cutting those carrots it was a breeze! The knife slid so smoothly and quickly and I wished I had attempted sharpening that knife ages ago!

In comes my attempted analogy. God's word is SHARPER than a two-edged sword. My one-edged "sword" was pretty dull at first, until I sharpened it. I started to wonder if sometimes when I'm not keeping up with the maintenance of my "sword", if I start to get dull, too. Do I spend more time messing around with good Christian literature or listening to sermons or reading commentaries instead of going straight to that sharp, two-edged Sword that I start to lose my potential? If I would keep in contact with my two-edged Sword, would I be more effective?

Then I moved on in my mental analogy of another verse that popped into my mind. Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. Proverbs 27:17. How thankful I am for my friends who help sharpen me, and I them. We need each other in order to be effective. If I lived in a safe little cocoon and didn't interact with my friends, how could I be sharpened? I'd be making more of a mess, like those carrots that kept breaking apart, than making something beautiful and useful. What a great verse! All the more reason to hang out with my friends, right?

So there are my thoughts for today. I'm sure they could be deeper and more correctly analyzed, but this is what I can offer at 11:00pm after a week of doctor appointments, document signing at the lawyer's to finalize the sale of a business, consultations with an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor for a little boy, a field trip, lab work, an eye exam, looking at a bunkbed for the boys, grocery shopping with the whole family (Yes, that needs to be included in the "stressful" list!), a Watkins party, and the general clean-up after a week that's normal schedule was non-existent. I had to laugh at my doctor this week when she asked if there was anything stressful going on in my life at this time. I just laughed and then said, "Nothing out of the ordinary." Gotta go sharpen my sword!