Sharpening Your Axe

A young man approached the foreman of a logging crew and asked for a job. "That depends," replied the foreman. "Let's see you chop down this tree." The young man stepped forward and skillfully chopped down a great tree. Impressed, the foreman exclaimed, "You can start Monday."

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday rolled by --and Thursday afternoon the foreman approached the young man and said, "You can pick up your pay check on the way out today."

Startled, the young man replied, "I thought you paid on Friday."

"Normally we do," said the foreman. "But we're letting you go today
because you've fallen behind. Our daily felling charts show that you've
dropped from first place on Monday to last place today."

"But I'm a hard worker," the young man objected. "I arrive first, leave last and even have worked through my coffee breaks!"

The foreman, sensing the young man's integrity, thought for a minute and then asked, "Have you been sharpening your axe?"

The young man replied, "No sir, I've been working too hard to take time
for that!"

In our own lives, prayer is about sharpening our axe. The time we spend in prayer is not wasted. It is a time when we bring our awareness back to God.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “If I had eight hours to chop down the big tree, I would spend 7 1/2 of those hours sharpening my axe. Most poor fools would spend the entire eight hours chopping away with the dull axe.”

Comments

[Steam Shower]

The quote on sharpening the axe is profound indeed. I believe Abraham said 6 hours instead of 7 and a 1/2 though.