This week, I "harvested" a massive tree stump. It was buried under a pile of dirt and concrete with just a small section of its tangled roots visible.

Even after scraping and digging for hours, moving dirt and rubble, until we could finally see it. It was so heavy that when I tried to move it with a winch, it mistook the stump as the anchor pulling my truck towards the stump.

Being blessed with a strong mind and a good back, I decided the obvious solution was to split the stump into two pieces. We cut down the middle with a chainsaw, used several wedges, a lot of grunts, and still, it absolutely refused even to split.

A stump to stump all stumps, it was a seemingly worthless mass of roots specially designed to provoke misery in its custodian.

And yet I wanted it. I knew a stump can have grain patterns that go crazy in weird and wonderful ways holding a wondrous beauty and unusual strength.

I hoped I would be able to expose beauty and value no one else saw.

Undoubtedly, you have some people in your life like that. Perhaps you are that person who seemingly everyone sees as a hopelessly tangled mass of misery.

My stump? I think I can see a few tiger maple bowls or maybe some jewelry boxes in it, but I am going to take another look to see if I am missing something even better.

If God left such wondrous beauty in a lowly tree stump, of how much more value is each person?

Ecclesiastes 12:13,14 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

—Luke