The work of our hands

In my new job as a “custodial assistant,” I discovered that when you bend down far enough with the sponge to see the brand name of the equipment you’re cleaning, you get to wondering about history: How did Mr. Kohler get into the toilet manufacturing business? And Mr. Crane? And Mr. American Standard? I presume no one simply stumbles onto the vocation of porcelain human-waste disposal without there being a pretty good story behind it. Ask any kindergartener what he wants to be when he grows up, and dollars to doughnuts it won’t be a water closet maker.

There is a classroom scene in the 1977 Woody Allen film Annie Hall, where in response to the character Alvy’s nostalgic musings, children of his 1942 school days take turns standing by their desks and say where they are now: “I run a profitable dress company.” “I’m president of the Pinkus Plumbing Company.” “I sell tallises.” “I used to be a heroin addict and now I’m a methadone addict.” “I’m into leather.”

The road is long with many a winding turn, as the Hollies sang in 1969. And few people today are where they thought they would end up. It may be that Shakespeare’s Malvolio is right and “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” But it is also true that “time and chance happen to them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11). And from yet another perspective, Proverbs indicates that it takes baby steps of willful choices to reach a destination. God knows the mix of all thereof.

Back to the point of useful appliances: An entrepreneur once told me that the name of the game is to look for a need—to find value, or to create it. Finding value I could understand more readily than creating it, so I requested examples of the latter. “Cell phones, tablets,” he said. So Misters Kohler and the long line of forebears in his noble profession were doubtless men of vision who turned the most obsolescence-resistant of human needs into profit. Like undertakers.

Now Tom Sawyer, he would be one who created value rather than finding it. He saw no value in whitewashing the old picket fence but a burdensome bother from Aunt Polly. Nevertheless, he knew how to call into existence the things that are not, on a minor creaturely scale, and managed to persuade Ben Rogers of the inestimable pleasure and privilege of taking a paintbrush to wooden slats in a rhythmic up-and-down motion. The modest charge: an apple.

And so the world is full of work to do, and not all can be kings but some must be kings’ tailors, tasters, and jesters. “If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?” (1 Corinthians 12:15-17)

To truly believe this saying is to gain wisdom and contentment. I have always read Psalm 90 as a dour prayer, with its emphasis on the ephemeral and transitory nature of life’s doings under the sun: “We bring our years to an end like a sigh. The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away” (verses 9-10).

But this time my attention is arrested by the ending verse that bespeaks a happy permanence in all we do for Him: “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!”