Workin' Man's Hands

My dad often times makes reference to "workin' man's hands" when I'm wearing gloves to work on the car or do work around the yard. You see he has been a maintenance man nearly his whole life. He'll have 30 years in doing it for the same company this March. So over the course of 30 years he has acquired very rough and calloused "workin' man's hands." From all the years of gripping screw drivers and turning wrenches he also has the grip of a bear. They have permanent stains and scars from all the work that they have done. And although I have put in my time in the factory setting, 7 years in a fabrication department, my hands are not nearly as rough and calloused as his are. One year of working in an office in the corporate setting has taken care of that for me. I do have scars from growing up and some of the crazy things I did and my hands have the marks to remind me, but all in all I do not have workin' man's hands.

I think of my hands in a slightly different way though. I look at these hands and think about all the work that they do, not just the physical labor. But across the whole spectrum, the work that my hands do. My hands write a tithe check every week, they give money to every needy person I see. They lend encouragement to a friend in need when I put my arms around him for a hug. My hands hold my wife's little hands when she needs me to be sweet. My hands also hold my infant and toddler sons when they are scared. They shield them from anything that I think might be dangerous to them. My hands fold in prayer many times a day for a plethora of things that are on my heart all the time. They reach up to the Lord when I praise and worship on Sunday mornings. These hands carry out all the good and bad decisions that I make over the course of every single day. They open and shut doors to things that I should and should not be looking at, they control the remote and dictate what my eyes take in at night. My hands do a lot of work, and I try very hard to make sure that the work that they are doing is good work, work that lifts myself and others up. My hands are doing all the work that will help to define my character to others. All the work that I have done up to this point, that people think of when they say the name Brillhart. My hands are laying the foundation for the path that my sons will walk down some day when I am gone. Some day Leyton and Ryder will being doing their own work in this world, blazing their own paths and I hope desperately that the work that my hands have done make a wide path for them to start on. I wont always be here for them, and someday they will have to do it without me. I want the work that I have done here to help get to a good point to fly on their own. As I sit and type this I feel like I am just rambling on and on, but there is so much work that these hands do, and it is terribly important that I am making the right decisions with the work that I do. It is something that I take very seriously and am constantly trying to keep myself in check with.

When you look at your hands what kind of work do you see on them? Whether you've got "workin' man's hands" or "corporate hands" doesn't really matter, what matters is the work that those hands are leaving behind for others.