When you’re doing a job all by yourself because no one else is there to help, you’ll need to use both hands for awkward projects.
An aging man, about 65 at the time, planned on pounding a wooden stake into the ground. He’d cut the branch from a downed pine tree and had designed a path going around his entire house. Using large rocks which he’d unearthed from around his property and branches from a recently-removed pine tree in his yard, the day came to get it done.
Holding a three-pound hammer in one hand and a thick branch section in the other, he took careful aim. But wait, there was a problem from the start. He never was very accurate hammering nails. Reasoning that the branch was thicker than a nail, he thought, What can go wrong?
He lined up the hammer with the stake, raised his right hand as he held the stake with his left, and brought it down hard! Oops! A miscalculation occurred. He hadn’t sent the memo from his right hand to his left. The hammer collided with the base of his thumb on his left hand…OUCH!
Unfortunately, several days later, his thumb still hurt. A bump appeared in the strike zone. It grew larger over the next several weeks. Arthritis set in. He’d broken a bone in his left hand!
It only takes one miscalculation to do irreparable damage!
Jesus was a carpenter (Mark 6:3). He knows about missing the peg. When He attempted to teach about God in His home community, people who’d known Him growing up resented His bold words.
”He came to His hometown and began teaching them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not His mother called Mary, and His brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us? Where then did this man get all these things?’“ (Matthew1354-56) In The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches everyday people about everyday life. Jesus says, ”“Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven… But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing…your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you“ ( Matthew61- 4).
Live your life to honor God! Give generously, but not to be noticed and rewarded by men; serve God and He will reward you!