humor on Craftsmanship

There’s a charming story about a little boy who made a gingerbread man. He poured his heart into crafting it, carefully decorating it with candy eyes and a cheerful smile. It was his creation, and he ...

An elderly master carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer of his plans to leave the house building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife enjoying his extended family. He w...

Paolo Uccello, an Italian painter and craftsman of the early Renaissance, lived in Florence during the late 14th and early 15th centuries. His obsession with perspective was so intense that he would s...

So he took the paint brush and went out back. She forgot about it until sometime later when there was another knock at the door. It was him. He obviously had been painting because there was paint spla...

Gerry, a Catholic, went to confession and told the priest he had taken some wood from work. The priest asked, “How much?” Gerry replied, “Not much, Father, just enough to build a garage at the back of...

A priest who had spent a fruitless day fishing picked out three fat fish in the market. “Before you wrap them,” he said to the store manager,” toss them to me, one by one. That way I’ll be able to tel...

In his excellent book, The Magnificent Story , James Bryan Smith shares this short little anecdote from the world of bumper stickers. While funny, it also brings up the commonplace idolatry that ...

A physician, a civil engineer, and a politician were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world. The physician remarked, “Well, in the Bible, it says that God created Eve from a rib tak...

It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard t...

As a stranger walked down a quiet residential street, he noticed a man struggling with a washing machine at the doorway of his house. The homeowner was clearly having a hard time, so the passerby, wan...

There was a woman who was baking her Christmas cookies and she heard a knock at the door. She opened the door to find a man who was dressed in pretty tattered clothes, and he was obviously poor. And h...

My wife, Ruth…was one of those who could lighten heavy hearts, especially mine. I will never forget when she announced what she wanted engraved on her gravestone, and for those who have so respectfull...

I witnessed a ritual sacrifice in the middle of a cool, third-wave coffee shop the other day. It’s the sort of place that attracts herds of bearded hipsters and where they brew your coffee by hand, on...

The composer Ludwig Van Beethoven was a devout man (some considered at times puritanical) who considered himself to be inspired by God while writing his compositions. He also worked extremely hard to ...

Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel (1629–1719) was a legendary Scottish Highland chieftain, famously reputed to have killed the last wolf in Scotland. Known for his fierce leadership and rugged Highland spir...

Two shipwrecked men in tattered clothes slouch together at one end of a lifeboat. They watch casually as three people at the other end of the boat bail furiously, trying to keep the vessel afloat. One...

Bumper stickers—and their counterparts on social media—make Simplicism seem virtuous: “Look at me! I’m a good and brave person for distilling this complex issue down to its essence and righteously tak...

The story is told of a farmer in a Midwestern state who had a strong disdain for “religious” things. As he plowed his field on Sunday morning, he would shake his fist at the church people who passed b...

Robert Ingersoll, the well-known agnostic, once visited Henry Ward Beecher, the abolitionist and celebrated American preacher of the time. While there, he noticed a stunning globe that displayed the s...

A doctor, an engineer, and a politician were arguing as to which profession was older. “Well,” argued the doctor, “without a physician mankind could not have survived, so I am sure that mine is the ol...

If you ever find yourself sympathizing with Charles Dickens’ character Ebenezer Scrooge regarding the commercialization of Christmas, you’re not alone—this has been a common complaint for quite some t...

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the importance of finding ways to rest and relax as part of a healthy, balanced life: I once read a book in which the author sa...

I’m not sure that I could have articulated the ground rules for the search for resilience the way I understand them today, but I must have intuited them nevertheless. Some of the basic ideas were thes...

One time, back when I was doing college ministry, I took a group of students camping. My wife came along with us. I had selected this really, really difficult hike. It was about ten miles long and alm...

My teenage son, Justin, had been invited to an area church by a friend. Since he had grown up as a PK (pastor’s kid) and had never been to a megachurch like this before, I wondered what impression it ...

One Ash Wednesday a decade ago, when I was new to Anglicanism, I knelt at a rail as Fr. Thomas, my priest, smeared a black cross on each forehead. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall ret...

Pablo Picasso lived among a group of artists in Paris in the early 20th century. One evening, the celebrated American writer Gertrude Stein was hosting a group of artists at her home, which doubled as...

The British poet and dramatist Alfred Austin was sometimes criticized for grammatical mistakes in his works. Austin pardoned himself saying, “I dare not alter these things; they come to me from above....

The story is told of Socrates walking through the market in Athens, with its groaning abundance of options, and saying to himself, “Who would have thought that there could be so many things that I can...

Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping, transcendence; making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages: let us walk through the door. …………………………...