Photo and Commentary ©2024 by Maylan Schurch
Friday, February 2, 2024
Wednesday is trash pickup day in our neighborhood, and on a walk that morning I spotted this pencil snapped in half. (Do you see the other half up beside the yard waste bin?)
As I snapped the photo I wondered about the story behind this. Maybe I’m making too big of a deal about it, but as a longtime operator of pencils I know that what mostly happens is that it’s only the point that breaks, and then you have to carry it over to a pencil sharpener.
But what happens to cause a fairly full-length pencil to snap in half? Unless a heedless baby gripped it in its fists and innocently applied the right kind of pressure—pretty far-fetched because pencils are tough—it seems as though someone deliberately broke it.
But why? A sonnet not developing well? A frustrating homework assignment, due tomorrow, dying on the vine? I’ve actually faced both these challenges, but I don’t remember ever taking it out on the writing instrument.
I wonder if Saul, the preconversion apostle Paul, thinking back on the shameful and criminal tortures he inflicted on Christians, was sometimes tempted to take his ink quill pen and twist it into uselessness. But this same Paul insisted again and again that any and every sinner (and he called himself “chief” of that tribe) can penitently and confidently turn to the One who can take the eraser-end of a divine forgiveness-pencil and make every sin vanish.
When’s the last time you reviewed what both Jesus and Paul called “the Good News”? Click the link below for Bible passages which will challenge you to follow their directions!