Young James valued his legs.  He didn’t know that he valued his legs.  In fact, he never even thought about them, but he was grateful that he was able to do everything that a good set of legs allowed him to do.  Each day when he got off the bus after a day at school, he changed clothes, and immediately set off on a long hike up in the woods above his house.  The hikes relieved the stresses of the day.  Out there in the mountains he didn’t have to worry about relationships, false friends, or about what people thought of him.  Nature was his friend.  He knew every nook and cranny and secret place on that side of the mountain.  He’d been to the top of the 8,000-foot peak, and had visited every lake that was within a day’s hike of his house.

Young James grew to manhood, married, had children, and still lived in the place where he was born.  Life was good.  Life was very, very good.  His children grew, and began to leave home.  They were good, too, but they had their challenges.  James was particularly worried about his eldest and next-eldest sons.  The elder of the two was of marriageable age, and couldn’t find a wife.  He was becoming morose and discouraged.  The next-oldest boy hated school with a passion, and loudly announced his dislike of school to the world every morning before having to go off to face it again.  What could a poor father do to help his troubled boys?  James was at a loss.

In the midst of his worries, another trouble intruded itself upon James’ world.  Over a three-day period of time, both of his ankles and one knee swelled to terrible proportions.  The pain was terrible, too.  A high fever set in.  James ended up in the hospital, and the doctors were unable to determine what the matter was.  They put him on antibiotics, as a precaution, but they really had no idea what they were treating.  The fever went away after a time, and James was sent home with the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis.  The swelling in his joints didn’t go away.  James expected to be crippled for life.

James, who had always enjoyed walking more than anything else in the world, suddenly couldn’t walk!  From his permanent position on the couch, he studied people’s legs as they walked past him in the living room.  He noticed how the knees flexed, how the muscles worked, and how the feet extended.  He tried to mimic the motions, but his own legs were dead sticks.

He felt that if he could just get outside and walk, that maybe he could work the stiffness out of his legs.  He hobbled out the door and onto the porch.  To get from the porch to the sidewalk required a three-inch step-down.  James stood and hovered on the brink of that precipice, and tried to build up the courage to make the step.  He couldn’t do it.  Tears swelled in his eyes, and he turned and went back to his couch.  He uncovered his legs, and looked at them.  They were nothing but bones covered with skin.  He cried.

“Why me?  What have I done to deserve this?” James wondered.  James confided his thoughts to a wise man.  “You won’t be able to see the reason for this for a long time, but be patient.  You’ll be able to look back later and see that this was one of the biggest blessings of your life.”  James respected the man, so he remembered what he said.

The younger of the two boys, being the one still at home, had to take over the operation of James’ farm.  He worked hard, accomplished more than James would have if he’d been up and around, and learned a great deal about work and about himself and his capabilities.  The lessons he learned spilled over into other areas of his life.  He began to apply himself to his schoolwork like he had to apply himself at home.

But the situation wasn’t sustainable.  James knew that the boy needed to move on with life.  Since James wasn’t able to take care of the cattle himself, he bit his lip and cried inwardly as he sold the fine herd of cows that he’d built up over so many years.  It was a bittersweet moment.  He loved his cows as much as he used to love walking.  He sold them at an all-time market high.  Cattle prices plummeted right after that, and didn’t recover for years.  The farm that he loved so deeply was leased out to another.

James gradually recovered the use of his legs.  Over time they became just as strong as they used to be.  The older boy was through with college, and wanted to come home to open a woodworking shop.  Having nothing better to do, James took the money he’d made from the cattle sale, purchased a shop for his son and him to work in, and became a cabinet maker.  His son taught him the skills that he needed.

But the boy was still morose, and becoming more discouraged by the day.  Moreover, he made it very plain that no one was to ever make any suggestions about what he was to do to fix his problem, and under no circumstances was anyone to ever fix him up with a date.  There were no proper candidates around, and both he and James knew it.

“He’s 29 years old,” James observed.  “The only way he’s ever going to get married is if some girl walks into the shop someday, and proposes to him.”

One day a man and a woman came into the shop carrying a box full of pieces of wood.  It was wood that James had never seen before.  The wood came from Africa where the couple had spent the previous 18 months.  They’d gone there to serve and to help the African people, and came away with a love for the people and the land.

Could James make a table to commemorate their service there?  Could he use the pieces of wood to make an inlaid design in the top that would have symbolic meaning?

James thought that he could.  The couple gave him permission to do whatever he wanted, and to come up with any design that he thought appropriate.  James thought for a long time.  His favorite bird was a quail.  He liked birds, and the couple sounded like they thought that Africa was about to take off—to take flight, so to speak.  So James inlaid two quail, a male and a female, in the center of the tabletop that he built.  The quail were the man and his wife—timid, nice people who went to Africa to help.  From other pieces of wood James made feathers and a border that surrounded the pair of quail.  When he was done, he was overcome at the beauty of the thing he’d created.  The couple was stunned, too, when he delivered it to their home in a distant town.

“You don’t happen to know of any good girls that would make a suitable wife for my son, do you?” he asked in parting.

“No, we don’t,” they replied regretfully.

A week later the couple was back in the shop.  “Do you remember the question you asked when you delivered the table?” they asked.  James didn’t.  “You asked if we knew any good girls.  We do!  We don’t know why we didn’t think of her then.  She’s 29, and absolutely the nicest girl we know.  We’ve told her about your son, and she has promised to call him.”

It was the hardest thing of James’ life to endure the affliction of not being able to walk for many months, but he recovered completely.

The younger son went to many more years of school after graduating from high school, got a doctorate, and became a veterinarian.

 

The elder son married the girl who was recommended by the couple who walked into the woodshop.  The couple left instructions with their own children that when they passed on, the table was to go the newlyweds.  The quail didn’t represent them as much as the quail represented those two young lives about to take flight.