Like most boys my father was my hero when I was a child. You would have had a difficult time convincing me that there was anyone smarter, faster or stronger than my dad. I really did believe it when I told my friends that “my dad can beat up your dad!” And it may well have been true. You see, my father was a landscaper, and for 8 months of the year he spent almost every waking hour hauling loads of soil from his truck to the gardens and maneuvering enormous rocks to make sure they looked just right. Though this took a physical toll on him, it left him stronger than an ox. When he and I used to wrestle, I could make absolutely no headway against him. I would run at him and even with a full head of steam could not knock him off-balance. He would just grab me with his rough, leathery hands and toss me aside like I was barely even there.
Dad had working man hands. I’ll never forget those hands, for they were hard as rock. Holding dad’s hand was like holding a sanding block and just about as uncomfortable. As he labored day-in and day-out, his hands built up so many rough calluses that they soon became as hard as dried leather. They were scarred with the evidence of many bumps and bruises on the job site. I saw in his hands an ideal, for to me they represented a hard-working man who labored diligently to support his family. I believe there is something inside each of us that really wants nothing more than to carry out God’s original command to humans which was to till the soil and to care for the earth. Dad had the privilege of doing that every day and the even greater privilege of loving nothing more.
Yet behind his love for working with plants and rocks and soil, dad always felt a twinge of shame. He grew up in an affluent family, one which had a history of politicians and lawyers. My grandfather was a Supreme Court judge, and his uncles were members of parliament. Surely, dad felt deep inside, landscaping was not a profession suitable for a man from such lineage. Finally succumbing to the pressure he created in himself, he returned to school, upgrading his two Bachelor’s degrees to a Master’s. For several years he worked diligently, studying languages, history and theology. A strange thing happened. As the months turned into years I noticed that his hands no longer felt like leather. The longer he worked in school, the softer his hands became. Before long his hands were much like mine – soft and free from calluses.
Dad graduated with a Master’s degree and tried so hard to be happy in an office job. He tried his hand at a few things and it wasn’t so much that he wasn’t good at them as that he just did not enjoy them. He found himself thinking nostalgically of burying his hands in fresh topsoil and sculpting beautiful gardens where there had been nothing but weeds. Finally it became too much and one day dad went and bought himself a great, big pickup truck. He returned to tilling the soil he had left behind.
Now whenever I see dad he has dirt under his fingernails. His hands are once again as hard as dried leather and I can’t imagine my son feels any more comfortable holding his hand than I did so many years ago. As he returns shamelessly to the task for which God created Him, his hands again bear evidence of his labor.
It occurs to me as I write this that one day we are all going to stand before God and he is going to reach down to each of us and feel our hands. He has assigned to all of His children the same task, and it is a difficult one. We need to take His message into all the world, diligently and shamelessly proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ. If our hands are not as rough as sandpaper and do not feel like old leather, perhaps we are not being diligent in that labor. If our hands bear no scars, perhaps we have not received the cuts and bruises that are bound to come to those who go forth on His behalf. One day God is going to reward those who labored diligently for Him and all the evidence He is going to need will be written on our hands. God will reward those who have working man hands.
