Baseball Bats as Object Lessons?

We recently visited out friend, Jim Seaver, in Northern Maine who brought us to visit a friend of his–Tom–who is a cabinet maker and baseball bat creator.  Tom is a personable guy who graciously stopped what he was working on to demonstrate bat making for us.  He quickly moved from the technical issues of making custom-made bats to the spiritual issues he encounters during the making.  He spoke of the wood as a great object lesson about us and how faults in the wood can’t be seen by the naked eye–how God works in us to mold us into the image of Christ the same way the machines use the patterns to create the bats.  What amazing love he demonstrates as he molds us into vessels for His use.  We left spiritually built up and carried with us the smell of nice clean wood shavings.