It is amazing what a boy can accomplish when he sets his mind to it.

The first mission given by God to men was to be a problem solver. (He was to perform taxonomical classification on the animals.) Since then, men have always been geared at problem-solving dominion works. Boys are men in the making. So we should not be surprised when boys attack projects — as small as building sand castles, or as big as plowing a field — with gusto. This is especially true when they have ownership of the mission.

The little boy pictured above is Master Joshua Phillips, age eleven. Joshua informed me that he wanted permission to move a three hundred-pound log from one end of a beach, through the water, to place it on the shore at the other end of a beach in the midst of stormy weather, “just to see if he could do it.” Permission was granted.

For the next hour, I watched with amazement as “he tackled the thing that couldn’t be done” (to quote Edgar Guest) with amazing focus and “did it.”

Never underestimate the power of a boy on a mission.