Tuesday, March 31, 2020

An Open Letter to My Son, Jack


Thirty-nine years ago, I fell in love with reading. I was in first grade, and by October I had read all my assigned literature books for the entire year, and started in on my sister’s books that were several grades in advance of my own. Before I turned ten, I had begun collecting books, lining them up along the edge of the floor in my room as I had no bookshelf. By the time I was twelve, I had begun serious reading, including Edward Gibbon’s massive Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which I had found haunting the stacks of the Girard Free Library. As a teenager, I discovered the classics of English, Russian, and American fiction, rummaging around in Dickens and Hugo and Scott. In high school, I discovered L’Amour and Asimov, and entirely out of step with those devoured John R. Rice’s academic tome on inspiration. College and the first five years of a bi-vocational pastorate left little time for reading, but when my church grew enough to support me on a full-time basis I happily rediscovered the joy of books. Now, for almost two decades, I have delighted again in study and, not surprisingly, become an author myself.
          Throughout these four decades, I have slowly gathered a library one book at a time. I hoarded books like other men hoard tools or collect baseball cards. For years they traveled with me from place to place in boxes. I would store them anywhere I could, and dream of the day I could unpack them all, and put them into a permanent home. Yet as the years passed, and my boxes of books multiplied, the spaces of my life proved too small to contain them. I crammed them into this spare corner and that one. I stowed them precariously along the stairs, banished others to the basement, and stacked still more double-deep on the shelves lining every square inch of my tiny church office.
         Last Fall I accepted the pastorate here in Dubuque. The first load that got moved was my books, this time housed in brand new plastic totes, an entire truckload of them. They got piled up on every available surface, including the floor, of my new office. One by one, my new church members would wander back to my office to see if the rumors were true. Did I really have that many books? Where was I going to put them all? Good question, I thought.
          Across the hall from my new office was another empty office. It would make a fine conference room, I thought, somewhere to hold deacon’s meetings and disciple new converts during the Sunday School hour. Then it dawned on me – why not line the walls with bookshelves and kill two or three birds with one stone? I could have space to breathe in my office, my books could finally have a permanent home, and the church could have a very usable mentoring/meeting space all at the same time.
          Eighteen years ago, God blessed our home with a fiery red-headed boy. He has challenged me and delighted me more than anything else in my life for the past almost twenty years. Three years ago, he began to develop an aptitude for working with his hands. At first, he built benches and boxes, carefully laboring over the tiny details. He spent hours on Youtube studying cabinet making and applying what he watched. Every bench he sold he plowed right back into buying more tools. Over time, he acquired machines and skill both unusual to find in a self-taught home-schooled high-school kid. He moved on from benches to tables and from tables to massive crosses and finely detailed pulpits. He was building a business right there in my garage. Then we moved.
          I stood in the empty room across the hall from my office that day and decided that I would risk my unproven capital at my new church. I did not understand how they functioned, financially, nor did they understand how I lead. But the father and the pastor in me both knew this was a good idea. Instead of just throwing up some shelving and calling it a day I would go to bat for the money necessary for the right materials. I would enlist Jack. And I would build a conference room and a permanent home for my books.
          The next day, I dragged Jack into the empty office. For two hours, we laid out a library. Oak. Built-in. More shelving space than I needed for once in my life since I have yet more books to acquire in future years. Different sizes of shelves. Decorative elements. Hand-made panels and pillars. Crown molding. The only thing I turned him down on was a coffered ceiling. We used every available inch of wall, including a closet that needed to be accessed but at the same time covered in shelves. Jack was delighted at the thought of building a secret door. Neither the father in me nor the pastor in me wanted to ask him to donate all of his time. His skills were beyond that. This was going to take hundreds of hours. He deserved to be compensated. But he would not be. He knew it, and I knew it. And he agreed to it without hesitation.
          For the last six months he has lived in that room, practically. Each day, after finishing his school work, he would head to the church. With his own money, he bought yet more equipment, the portable kind necessary for on location construction. All through the winter he worked. Everything but the finish work had to be done outside. He shoveled snow off of his work area, and learned to ignore the cold of an Iowa winter. He set up tents tied down with bricks and chairs to keep the rain off his equipment. He battled a room where every wall and the ceiling and the floor was out of square. He crafted each bookcase as a unit, and we carried them in together and set them in place. He moved outlets and heating vents. He fought the secret door tooth and nail for a couple of months. Along the way, he celebrated his eighteenth birthday. Last week, I helped him with the homestretch, and together we spent hour upon hour hand-rubbing Danish oil into the wood, watching the grain come alive.
          Many men are proud of their sons. They sit in the stands and watch them hunker down over the line of scrimmage. They schlep them from game to game, from tournament to tournament. At every chance, they brag to their friends of how smart or talented or dedicated or athletic or clever their sons are. That is natural. I am all for it. But – and forgive me for this – I do not know another father of my acquaintance whose teenage son has given him such a princely gift as Jack has given me. Because he loves me. Because he loves the Lord. And because he loves to do fine work. I do not know what he will do with his life but I have told him again and again that I cannot wait to see. Whatever he does, he will do it with excellence. The proof is right across the hall from my office.









          It is not enough, but this blog post is all I can offer by way of repayment.
          Thank you, Jack.
          I am proud of you.
          And I love you.  

15 comments:

  1. Jack, you are a fine young man. In the short amount of time I have had the pleasure of knowing you, I find that I have to remind myself that you are indeed a fresh 18 years old.

    The workmanship in this conference room is as professional as one would expect with someone with as many years of experience in woodworking as you have just existing on the planet.

    Congratulations on a job well done. You can see the pride in your father's eyes as he stands in this room...

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  2. Spectacular! Can't wait to see it one day. This fills me with inspiration for and anticipation of various things I will get to share and do with my kids now and in the future.

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  3. Remember dad, that every time you walk in that room you will know who spent hours and hours crafting this wonderful room, also remember that the fine craftsman will feel a wonderful sense of accomplishment and purpose knowing that he did this - you can't ever take that away. This room will be the model and the pattern that you will show to others and many will open their wallets for his expertise - this room will pay for itself in no time

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  4. What a wonderful transformation of a room. Our Master desires us to strive for excellence in the gifts that He gives us & I see that in your life Jack. So thankful for your life and testimony, you were a blessing to us at MBBC & pray that God will continue to use for His Glory. Trust that you are still singing and playing the guitar, I miss hearing that. ms. judy

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  5. Beautiful work. This is the reason why artists starve...the passion of the creation overrules the recompense of the reward. No doubt Jack can fully appreciate Eph 4:16 as he thinks of the art of the joinery.

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  6. Thank you so much for sharing this Brother Brennan! What a testimony the
    training taught in the Scriptures.

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  7. Wow! What a great story! Does he have a portfolio of pulpits he has built I might be able to peruse?

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    1. He's only 18, and he's only built two pulpits, though he has done estimates for about a half dozen others without getting the job. He's getting good at estimates. =) If you know what you are looking for you can send him a description and he can build you an estimate.

      You can contact him at buildsbyjack@gmail.com or find his page on Facebook at Builds by Jack.

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    2. Bro. Tom, As I begin to scroll down through those photos my mouth dropped OPEN......and stayed that way....WOW....I like you am a bookworm (something my late mother imparted to me) and I, like you have them boxed and stacked and piled and yes,shelved in a hodge-podge of miss-matched makeshift shelving all around our house. My wife thinks me to be a bit daft and occasionally asks me when I'm going to start getting rid of some to which I kindly reply "GET RID OF THEM???" They are my version of gold! I just wish I had time to actually read more of them but I have amassed a library of Christian volumes(something I get by the New Birth from our Lord!)that would make some preachers green with envy as well as a fairly good collection of works regarding Military, Maritime and Aviation History as well (something I got from my late WW2 Naval Aviator Daddy!) On top of that I have amassed a fairly extensive music and audio (preaching and Bible teaching) library as well.....Would it be possible to ship Jack to Pickens SC for a few months? Room, Board and Materials....and the best his imagination can come up with! LOL....I can dream...I'm 65 now....I just hope I can find someone WORTHY to pass all this along too when I go to our Long Home. You Tell Jack this old coot from SC is seriously impressed just as much as you are seriously BLESSED! Are those books available for your interested church members to check out and read? Our SS Class actually started a church library for just that reason and most of the books in it came from my collection. I am sad to say though that all the electronic gadgets people have these days have definitely robbed many people in general of a desire (or time) to read real books. I have struggled with that myself. God Bless you Brother.

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    3. Greg, you feel me, don't you? I think we would enjoy examining each other's collections.

      No, I don't loan out my books. I learned that the hard way. I do give some away sometimes. We do, though, have a smaller church library in another location that is available first come first served.

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  9. Wow. What a blessing. Jack has done a fine and impeccable job on your library. May GOD bless your studies and May GOD continue to bless Jack with wisdom and skill in carpentry and new special projects and opportunities. May GOD continue to bless your relationship as dad and son in the coming years of Jacks adulthood. Enjoy. Vivaciously happy for the anointed time you will spend with the LORD. 🙏🏼

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  10. Wow ! Incredible craftsmanship brother Jack, I see Pastor why you would be so proud & the bounding that took place when you were able to finish enormous project with him, what that must have felt like between a dad & his son ? Hey come to think about it, Noah was a carpenter & so was our LORD & SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. As I close, what GOD has brother Jack do with his gift for HIS glory, I can only imagine........

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