You know, iron is pretty tough stuff.

When we say someone has an iron constitution, we mean they never get sick. When we say they are hard as iron, or as unbending, usually the character of the person is such that they are determined, that their will seems unbreakable no matter what life throws at them. Usually is a compliment.

In my wood stove, I have a baffle. It is about a quarter of an inch thick, and it spreads across the top of the stove to keep the flames from rushing up the chimney. The fire runs into this seemingly unburnable barrier and slides around it, which keeps the actual flame and the hottest part of the fire in the wood stove for a longer amount of time. That means more heat in the house and not going up with the smoke. Never mind my poor thin walled stovepipe would, indeed, overheat and possibly bum without that baffle.

I bought this woodstove from a fellow who had it out in front of his house with a $150 sign on it. He said there was nothing wrong with it, he had just bought a prettier one for his home and the plain, black iron box had to go. This was over 10 years ago.

At first the wood stove worked like a dream but one day there was a loud clang! The baffle had bent from all the heat and fell off its pegs. Oh, I took it out after it was cool and bent it back into shape but the iron was never the same. It would seem to be as strong as ever, I had to use my sledge hammer to straighten it, but once back in the stove the heat would bend it rather quickly. What is a guy to do?

I feel empathy for that baffle, as silly as that sounds. I relate with it. Sometimes I am strong to a particular sin and would never dream of doing something. But being strong to it, I don't take it seriously and it works on me. I don't fear it, I loiter around it, and next thing you know I start to bend, I start to compromise. Once I've done that, even if I get "straightened up" after a good whack of a hammer, it is so easy to warp right back out of shape when I get exposed to it again.

Iron is pretty tough stuff. Yeah, well Sampson was pretty tough too. Know what I mean?

So I put in some rebar to hold it up and that worked, until the rebar bent. See, we might have a friend help us avoid sin but if we insist on going there and dragging our friend along with us, for "support", it might be we both end up becoming a little "soft" on the sin. And that's what happened. You could say don't use the stove, but that's not the purpose. Just as we are meant to be out in the world, but not of the world, our purpose being to preach the gospel. So we can't fix this problem by avoiding it, we need a real solution.

So to sum up, like that baffle, I can't do it alone. And even help from a friend, its not enough. But I think I found the solution. I went to the hardware store and bought me a monstrous piece of iron rod, just over an inch thick, of hardened steel. You say won't this bend? And I am thinking no, it is just too fool thick for that stove to overcome.

The plain and simple conclusion is, if you can't do it alone and you're friends can't help, maybe you should try a better friend. Like, oh, Jesus. He does his part leaving you free to do yours. Relying on anyone else would be, yes you guessed it, baffling.

(OK, I know, groan. But it's better than some joke about a woman ironing her laundry in Methuen!)

Randy