Not Built with (Gloved) Hands
by Shawn Chestnut
<email Shawn>

“Yeah, I know about you office-types!” Shawn Tompkins said, after handing me a pair of work gloves. I was on my way to the trash heap behind Juanita’s house, ready to do some hauling.

“Yeah, soft hands,” I replied, “they’ve been working at the keyboard.”

The situation was made even funnier by the obvious differences between us. Although, Shawn and I share the same first name, there is not much that we have in common in our physical appearance. Shawn is a big, tough officer of the law, custom-made for wrestling bad guys to the ground. I’m a completely unimposing figure with the forearms of a 9-year old girl. It went without saying that I needed the work gloves more than he did. Thus, the trash was hauled without incident, other than a small scuffle with a group of hornets, and I was able to return unscathed to the scraping, caulking and painting of Juanita’s house.

As I vigorously scraped the old paint (wearing heavy gloves), I found myself thinking about how infrequently I engage in this kind of manual labor. Some guys really enjoy working around the house or yard, and I certainly have done my share. But I find as I get older that I am less inclined to that activity. A satisfactory sense of achievement or pride in a job well done has been more successfully acquired for me by way of intellectual pursuits. This is another way of saying that my particular gifts and talents lie elsewhere. That is another way of saying that I really stink at the whole “working with your hands” kind of thing.

Not a far leap in thinking from this idea was the question of what exactly I had to offer the whole effort of Oak Hills on this trip to Yakama. Should I even be here, taking up a space that could be occupied by a more skilled individual? And if I am mediocre at construction work, I am even worse at the second and more important activity of our days in White Swan, reaching out in relationship to the children at Totus Park. Whatever “people skills” that resided darkly dormant in me, however, somehow were passed on in exponentially abundant supply to my daughter, Julia, who surpassed even my own lofty expectations in her ministry of friendship. This only served to amplify my growing sense of uselessness. A couple of days into the trip, I was feeling like a real zero. One can imagine the difficulty of having a feeling such as this for a person that normally flies through his workdays with an elevated sense of self-importance and adeptness. The contrast was startling.

And yet, that gloved hand still scraped it's pathetic little scrapes, one hand among the many that applied themselves to the task of ministry in Yakama. As relatively marginal as that hand’s contribution was to the whole, it still added to the result. A number, no matter how small, when added to another number, still produces a sum that is larger. A house was painted and roofed just in time for a wedding. Hearts were touched. Love was shared. Gratitude was expressed. Collectively, the ministry of Sacred Road impacted the community in White Swan. The hand that scraped was, in a sense, not really my hand. It was Chris Granberry’s hand. And it was, in a sense, not really Chris’ hand, but it was the hand of Christ.

While we were in Yakama, Jesus scraped and caulked and painted. Jesus roofed a house, tiled a bathroom and replaced plumbing. Jesus also did some painting on the faces of the children at Totus Park. He played kickball, blew bubbles and sang the “Baby Shark” song. In various ways and in various places, Jesus loved and served the Yakama people. All this was accomplished when He laid his life down on the cross, removing our debt of sin and making a sanctuary for the Holy Spirit in our hearts. That same Spirit is the God who inspired us to go to Yakama, put gloves on our weak hands, pick up wire brushes and scrape the paint off a house.

The mysterious way in which the Lord chooses to glorify himself always strikes us as backwards when compared to our standard way of getting things done. What’s He waiting on, anyway? His promise to make all things new seems like a distant dream at times. For days we pondered together the enigma of the Native American people. Our conversations ended nowhere but in a gnawing sense of powerless frustration. How can we make a place for the Native culture without subsuming it into our own? How can we reconcile the centuries of abuse when we are so time-bound to our current framework of life? What difference can a single person make? The sins of our father’s fathers separated us from any hope of peace before recorded history. We might as well attempt to hold back a tsunami with a sandbag, or pick up Mt. Rainier and throw it into the ocean. Could such a thing be possible? All we have to offer is a mustard seed.

So it seems that the Lord is going about the building of His Kingdom in the same fashion and through the same means by which he has always worked. The least shall be first, and His strength is made perfect in our weakness. A self-conscious introvert will lift up a smiling boy to the basketball goal for a slam-dunk, a skinny nerd will restore a house, and a child shall lead them. The Lord of Heaven will use this ill-suited soldier to further His Kingdom on earth not because He has to, but because He wants to.

How I hope that Rocky will someday understand how much Jesus rejoices over finding a lost coin. She is exactly the type of person that Jesus sought out. Weak types, hurting types, broken types, and yes, even office-types like me.