February 11, 2025
Hi Friends,
Two completely unrelated events foster my thoughts this week. The first occurred this past Sunday, when a dear friend said she’d been thinking lately about confession. The second occurred two days earlier as I was running the edge of a section of my dining room table past a high speed router bit. The bit was cutting that hard wood like a hot knife through butter when my ears detected just the slightest click for one brief instant. I held my breath, finished the pass and used my thumb to briefly check the edge. All was well and I was relieved, having completed one of the most challenging operations on the dining table I’m building.
The next morning, I was in my shop again. A closer inspection of the routered edge revealed the source of that telltale click I’d heard. The high speed blade had hit a knot in that hard wood and chipped a small divot along the edge of the table — a divot that could spell disaster for the finished product.
The second event now takes me back to the first. In discussing confession with my friend, I pointed out that most people see the word negatively, with respect to revealing sin in their lives. While this is certainly one aspect of confession, it is not the only one. The word, hōmōlōgeō, literally means “to say the same thing.” As surely as we can “confess” our sin, we can also “confess” love for another person. We can “confess” our faith in Jesus Christ. When one confesses, one tells the truth with respect to reality. This is always a good thing, which leads me back to that divot in the edge of my table.
How was I to fix it? If I put wood filler in it, it wouldn’t receive the stain like the rest of the wood and would become an unsightly irregularity. If I sanded the divot out, I would create an uneven finish along a highly visible edge, something just as unsightly. Gluing a patch also has risks because glue resists most stain as well.
In the end, I was fortunate enough to find part of the piece that cracked out. I carefully glued it in place. Yesterday, I added a second sliver of patch with more glue, held in place by masking tape until the glue hardened. When all had dried and cured, I sanded it carefully, by hand, to the point where the error is hardly visible. I’m pleased, which leads me back to confession.
I could only move to fix the divot when I acknowledged that it was there and needed to be fixed. Denial served no useful purpose. In the same way, if we confess our sin, we can move forward to repentance, reparation and freedom. If we confess our faith, we give ourselves a direction for living and a standard by which to live. That adage, “Confession is good for the soul,” is only half the case. It’s also good for living a life of growth and freedom.
Where do you need to acknowledge reality today? Will you do it?
Blessings!
Doug