I love this chainsaw. When a tree fell across our driveway during the big nor’easter last month, this chainsaw – along with the help of members and friends – was instrumental in transforming the obstruction into firewood.

But that’s only half the reason I love this saw. If you look closely – and if you know your chainsaws – you’ll see that the model of this saw is impossible to identify. That’s because it’s six. Not model 6, but 6 models.

Pete Cavicchi, a member at FCC-Hanson, is a mechanical genius who works for Dick’s Power Equipment on Rte. 53 in Hanover.¹ I owned a chainsaw when I moved to Hanson 3 years ago, an inexpensive machine that died an early death because I had expected it to work like a machine with a higher capacity. Even “Dr.” Cavicchi couldn’t revive the patient. But he told me not to worry.

A week later, this baby arrived – in the same case I had delivered my old machine to him in. Apparently, from time to time irreparable saws come into the shop. But they’re not all un-repairable for the same reason. So Pete recovered the guide bar from one machine, the cutting chain from another, the actual engine from a third, and so on. For most of us, harvesting those useful parts wouldn’t do us much good. But a master mechanic knew what to do with them. Because he knew how to combine the salvaged parts together correctly, there is a nice pile of 2 foot logs ready for splitting in a stack in the backyard of the parsonage instead of in a single trunk draped across the driveway.

In 1 Corinthians 6:11, St. Paul has just finished listing off some of the ways the fallen human race demonstrates its depravity. Then as now money, sex, and power are often involved. But lest his readers congratulate themselves on being “better than” other people, Paul says “and such were some of you.” Sobering news. We all have something in our background that we’d just as soon not have the rest of the world know about. As the General Confession puts it, “the memory thereof is grievous to us.” But Paul didn’t leave the Corinthians there. He knows he himself oppressed the believers he had now been called to serve. So he wrote, “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the LORD Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

Jesus doesn’t just save – He restores. He redeems. He transforms.

Just like Pete Cavicchi took useless parts and made them into an effective unit, so our Savior takes us and transforms us into a church that can effectively serve Him.

But no one ever brings a saw into the shop that they think is working fine. Which is a shame, because then they’ll never meet the master mechanic. And if we think we are doing perfectly well without the Great Repairer of our Souls, we’ll never meet Jesus. Yet if we humble ourselves, admit our utter need for a savior, and submit to His leading, He can make us part of a wonderful team that accomplishes great things in His Name.