Last week, I finished a live edge bowl for a wedding gift for a tech who helps my wife at dialysis (a shoutout to Hannah). I applied two coats of sanding sealer and four coats of shellac to finish the bowl. I set it downstairs to dry and inspected it the next morning. It looked great, but … I found a pile of sawdust underneath a small hole that was under the bark: the telltale sign of a powder post beetle. A bowl with a live larva inside: not a good gift to give to someone! I recalled that pallets used for my Romanian shipments are heat-treated to prevent just such beetle infestations, so I Googled the heat-treating method. I found out that I had to heat the wood to 130° for 30 minutes. No problem, or so I thought. I don’t think that my wife would have appreciated me cooking a larva in her oven, but she was away at rehab. I turned on the oven, but the lowest temperature setting was 170°. But, I had used shellac on the bowl, and the alcohol based shellac flashes at 170°. So I had to open the oven door every few minutes to keep the temperature under 170° but above 130°. I left the bowl downstairs overnight for a final test. It passed! No sawdust and no powder post beetle larva left alive. Hey, I had no idea what was living inside of my bowl underneath the bark! Much like my spiritual life. And you have no idea what is living inside of my hidden man … inside of my heart and my mind. Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” We all have evil lurking inside the dark recesses of our hearts. Why not come clean with the dear Lord. After all, He already knows the secrets that you are hiding. Let the Lord clean out your heart, like me exterminating the larvae in my bowl. Come clean before God. You’ll be glad that you did.
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