faith and work on Craftsmanship

Jesus also spent time—decades even—building stuff. Jesus was a tradesman. He is called a tekton (Mark 6:3), a builder who used his hands. God came to earth and apparently thought it worth his while to...

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 ...

I love watching young boys and girls build things with Legos. Their small, creative masterpieces cannot help but reflect their image-bearing nature and remind us we were all made to make things. When ...

Have you ever heard of a Stradivarius violin? It’s the gold standard of violins—instantly recognizable and famously expensive. These aren’t $29.95 instruments. One sold for $1 million, another for $4 ...

The wonderful word master used to describe the person who is at the top of his or her craft, whatever the profession. It was a title that one could work toward and with some degree of confidence ascri...

...work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental...

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art.

Let us practice the fine art of making every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there."

Da Vinci painted one Mona Lisa. Beethoven composed one Fifth Symphony. And God made one version of you. He custom designed you for a one-of-a-kind assignment. Mine like a gold digger the unique-to-you...

What you do in the present by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neig...

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

All good work is done in defiance of management

We must do our business faithfully; without trouble or disquiet, recalling our mind to GOD mildly, and with tranquility, as often as we find it wandering from Him.

We know God not just in our conscious awareness and in prayer, but also in a deep inchoate way, by participating with Him in building this world – by growing things, building things, carving things, c...

It is our best work that God wants, not the dregs of our exhaustion. I think he must prefer quality to quantity.

We get a feel for the goodness of working as creatures with bodies in Leo Tolstoy’s classic Anna Karenina . In the novel, Constantine Dmitrich Levin is a wealthy landowner in nineteenth-century R...

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word – excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

In the world of the rabbis, a scholar was expected to earn his keep by engaging in a secular profession. The Mishnah tractate Avot reads: Make them [the words of the Law] not a crown wherewith to mag...

Looking through the lens of Holy Scripture, human work must be seen first and foremost as value contribution, not economic compensation. We can have a flourishing, fruitful life even if we don’t get a...

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.

Note: This was originally posted on February 15, 2017 on the Stirring Our Affections website. Does our working shape us? Depending on what you do, you might answer that readily in the affirmativ...

Work supplies the physical, psychological, artistic, and religious needs of communities extending to the ends of the earth. Furthermore, through work, we create abundance out of which we help meet the...

He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of sel...

Father God, You introduce yourself to us in Genesis (1) as the God who works. Who created this beautiful world we are privileged to inhabit. We thank you for your work You created us to till the ...

Is your last name Smith, Miller, Cooper, or Baker? Many surnames have their origin in the trades that your ancestors were identified with. Today, especially with the rise of the “gig economy,” people ...

Labor is not only the destiny of man; it is endowed with divine dignity.

O God, you have bound us together in this bundle of life; give us grace to understand how our lives depend upon the courage, the industry, the honesty, and the integrity of our fellows; that we may be...

G. K. Chesterton was well-known (and iconoclastic) in his defense of tradition in a time when progress was all the rage in Western Europe- in technology, in the sciences, in philosophy. Chesterton, on...

In contrast (and contradiction) to cultural mindlessness (that can hardly be underestimated!): The Sabbath and its observance may cultivate a theological mindfulness. . . . How so? The Sabbath sanctif...