The Quiet AmbitionSample

“Work with Your Hands”

What’s so good about working with your hands?

I want to get to the answer to that question by first relating a different one. Sometimes when I get around a table with friends, I like to ask, "What would you like to do for work if you weren't doing what you're doing?" I find it to be an illuminating question to get

into the personality of people: what are their longings, what do they enjoy, but also feel they're missing?

Almost invariably, the answers are some kind of work with your hands, something more tangible: painting or carpentry, or barbering. Once, my wife surprised the group by answering, “Midwife.” Raised eyebrows and surprised looks that asked, Really? "Yeah," she said, "because midwives help people out."

Which reminds me of another one of my favorite stories of the quiet ambition in the Old Testament. At the beginning of Exodus, we meet the anonymous new pharaoh of Egypt who is like the conniving, large-headed rat of the 90s cartoon “Pinky and the Brain": he wants to try and take over the world. Recognizing how the exponential growth of the Israelites may provide an obstacle to his aspirations, he makes a diabolical decree: The midwives shall kill every son born to the Hebrew women (Exodus 1:15-16).

It’s a horrifying command. What could a pair of lowly old midwives do in the face of such grave evil?

But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, "Why have you done this, and let the male children live?" The midwives said to Pharaoh, "Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them." So God dealt well with the midwives. (Exodus 1:17-20)

In short, midwives help people out.

And, of course, once the babies are out, the dirty jobs don't stop. As the father of four, whose youngest was potty-trained but a few years ago, I remember it all too well. But as Martin Luther reminds us, that simply means more opportunities for practicing largeness in littleness. "God, with all his angels and creatures," the reformer writes, "smiles when the Christian father is washing diapers, because he is doing so in faith."

Working with our hands is good because God hides himself under the guise of his human creatures.

In what ways do you enjoy working with your hands? How do you find it life-giving?