“People That Don’t Serve the Lord Miss So Much”

My friend, Ed, was a finish carpenter who started learning the trade later in life. He was quite intellectually interested in the process of becoming an accepted master of his craft. His father had been a general carpenter for many years, and had given him this advice:

“If you are respectful and humble, these older men will go out of their way to help you. If you act like you think you know a lot, they won’t tell you anything.”

He had been at this learning curve for a few years, clearly out of the apprentice stage, and probably well into the journeyman, when we had occasion to discuss some things. He had some errands to run, so we decided to do our visiting on the road. He stopped at the modest, unpretentious home of a master craftsman, a man renowned throughout the large metropolitan area for his great expertise and lightning speed in building wooden railings for spiraling staircases. Even to my untutored eye, there was something impressive about the man. Ed told me later that he was constantly sought by others, who offered him large sums of money to teach them what he knew. He wouldn’t take any of them.

This man showed us a shaper sharpener that he had designed because he couldn’t find what he wanted. It was ingenious, and of a larger size by far than normal. Laughing at the memory, he told us of the first time that he turned the thing on in a house with a crew. It sounded like an airplane propeller, and one fellow thought it was fixing to fly apart. He ran out of there….

It was very interesting, and at the last of our visit with him, he showed us how he had fixed two window air conditioning units. It was quite interesting, indeed, to see this master craftsman in wood manifest the self-satisfaction that he got from figuring out something rather remote from his vocation.

Some months went by, and Ed was visiting in my home. “Do you remember that man we visited that day?” he said.

I nodded. I certainly did.

“Well, Mark, for some reason that fellow has taken a liking to me. He has actually gone out of his way to show me things—things that are worth literally tens of thousands of dollars.”

I looked at my friend. I had some idea of what this meant to him. I knew how he had prayed over his first vocation. When he left it, he said the Lord spoke to him and said, “I gave you your first job, and you didn’t like it very well. What would you like to do now?” And he told the Lord, “I’d like to build houses.” So the Lord had opened a way for him in that area.

My friend was staring directly at me, and the water stood in his eyes. “Mark,” he said huskily, “people that don’t serve the Lord miss so much.”

“The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way.”* (Psalm 37:23)

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil.”* (Proverbs 3:5-7)

“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”* (Romans 8:1)