Many know of our project house, and my injuries that have caused some discomfort. Sore fingers, a bruised side and ego, plus many others aches and pains. This week we started laying hardwood floors through out the house. I needed to scrape the floor clean of splattered joint compound, thin set that was used as wall texture currently glued tight to the subfloor, and of course the decades of dirt that filled every crevasse of this 1940’s house.. I know gloves are used to protect hands from the abuses of manual labor but I find they hamper my work so I rarely wear them. I picked up a straight hoe (flat blade, on long handle ) and went to work furiously scraping. Today my palm sports a sore spot where a blister was created, busted, and then skin torn off before I was aware a sore was even being created, an amateur sore but none the less it was painful.
Hands can be clues to the type of work an individual preforms, mine suggest an office worker who pretends to be an amateur carpenter on occasional weekends. Nails that never really come clean hint at mechanical experience. Tough calloused ends on fingers, guitar player. Thick hands like my grandfather’s or those of my father in law, speak of a farmer’s life. Some friends are missing part of the first digit of an index finger a too common feature of a carpenter’s hands. A life time of hard work etched by calluses and scars in the hands.
Thomas said it this way “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were… I will not believe it is him.” We call Thomas a doubter, I think Thomas understood how hard the work of the cross truly was, he knew that hard work would leave its unique mark.
Soon it will be Good Friday and Christians worldwide will honor the work of Jesus. I can’t pretend to understand the work of the cross. I can’t fathom the reasons God created a world that requires such work, but I can have an appreciation for the hard work it took to craft and for the commitment it took to finish that work. The self sacrifice, the pain, the love, and the effort that left its mark in the hands of the worker. Like Thomas I’ll recognize Jesus not because of the centuries of masterpiece paintings, not because of the descriptions offered by skillful preachers, not even by his own claims, but by the hands he holds out to greet me.
Jesus didn’t wear protective gloves either, they likely would have hampered his work.
David
