Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Today we're going to talk about hands. Practically speaking, what do we do with our hands? That's obvious. I won't take too much time on it. Practical survival—that's what we do. If you've ever hurt your hand or had it put in a cast, or even hurt one of your fingers, you suddenly become aware of how much you do with your hands. We dress ourselves, we clean ourselves, we feed ourselves. We make the shelter over our heads habitable, or we even make the shelter over our heads with our hands.

When Stuart and I were missionaries back home in England, we literally built our cedar wood home. It came on a great big lorry like a children's toy with a book. There was a plumber, an ex-banker, a housewife who used to be a teacher, and three little children. We put that house together, literally. We had to learn how to do it—how to make the concrete, how to put the heating pipes in. We did it mostly by the book or by picking up the phone and asking the experts how you did it. How did you build a chimney? It's got bends in it in England. How did that happen? Literally, with our hands, we put our shelter over our head.

Social activities—we shake hands with people. We wave hello, we say goodbye with our hands. Body language—we hug, we caress. Helping skills—we do them with our hands, carrying loads, usefulness. Charity, handouts—it's got downplayed, but handouts are very important. If we're the only ones that are doing that and nobody gets help unless we hand out help. Giving a hand, we say. We bathe fevered brows. We do these helping things with our hands.

Not only do hands talk to our world through what we do as we carry the load, they talk to our world about who we are. If you see somebody doing something with their hands for someone else, you usually say, "What a nice, caring person they are." You don't say, "Oh, look at her hands doing that apart from her body and her personhood." What we do with our hands says a lot to our world, to our non-Christian world who perhaps would not come to a Christmas coffee, but they watch what we do and that tells them who we are, which is rather scary.

They say something to our world on their own. They have their own body language. If you wring your hands, if you watch people's hands—and have you noticed on television when they're interviewing people sometimes the camera will go down to their hands? That tells you something about what's going on in the person's soul. They're anxious, or they're bored. Drumming with their fingers tells you something about them. Or they're fiddling with things, uptight, or they're shaking their finger in somebody's face. Our body language with our hands is very important.

I talk with my hands. I know a lot, even up here in the pulpit. But I'm really talking about what my hands say to my world when I'm not behind a pulpit and behind a Bible teaching it somewhere or other. I'm concerned about that because I want my hands to have a body language that talks of Jesus Christ. What have your hands been doing this week? Think about that. If you could write a list of everything your hands have done, what would it be? Did you go rummaging through clothes on a rack with your hands, looking at the price tags, trying them on your body, taking them off your body?

Who were you buying them for? What were your hands buying those things for? For yourself, or were you busy buying clothes, looking through the rack because missions is coming up and we don't want our missionaries looking like the missionary barrel? I heard somebody the other day saying some really nasty things about missionaries. They said, "They always look so dowdy." Have you ever wondered why? Because they don't have any money to buy clothes for a brief period when they come home from Africa. Why buy winter clothes in Wisconsin? Or they've been out there five years and styles change.

One of the things that I always delight to do—and I'll just share this because it's my delight—is to take my particular missionary that I have prayed about out to Brookfield Square and rummage through with my hands on the rack for her and with her and buy her some new clothes instead of buying them for myself. What are my hands doing for myself or for others? Your hands can literally sew things for others instead of sewing something for yourself.

Good hands do good things. Not that it's not good to sew things for yourself, not that it's not good to buy things for yourself, but Christian hands should do more than things for ourselves. Good hands do good things or good works, the Bible says. But good works need to be accompanied by good words or people will get confused. If they see our hands doing a lot of good things, good deeds, good works for others and we never explain why we're doing it, whom we belong to—"I'm doing this because I'm a Christian"—they'll think we're doing it because we're good.

There is none good but one, that is God. We mustn't take that glory to ourselves. That might even give us an opportunity to tell people why we're doing something good. You can say, "I wouldn't do this if I didn't know Jesus Christ. I'd be doing this for myself. But the whole of my lifestyle, the whole of my attitude, the whole of my transformation of my mind has changed because I know Jesus Christ." We don't want people, and we don't want ourselves, thinking that what we do earns us brownie points with God.

The passage of Scripture I want to look at and take the basis from today is Ephesians 2:8 and 9 specifically. Let me just read you a little bit of Ephesians 2. Paul, speaking to a group of new believers in Ephesus, said, "You were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature, following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath."

He's just talking a whole lot of theological language saying we weren't believers, we weren't Christians. When we weren't, we used to live like our world lives without any concept of service or doing good things for others. But because of his great love for us, God, who's rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It's by grace you've been saved. God raised us up with Christ, seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. That's our position now we know Jesus.

In order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Jesus. He's talking about the cross, and he's talking about those sort of women and men that come to realize that we were dead to God, but Christ can make us alive in our relationship with him if we ask him to forgive our sins. For it's by grace you've been saved through faith. This not from yourselves, it's the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.

We are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. We are not saved by good works; we are saved unto good works. The good works come after salvation. In some denominations more than others—and I can take other denominations to illustrate other things—there is a tendency to believe because we haven't understood what we're being taught possibly, that we get to heaven by doing good things. I can say that because I come from an Anglican background.

I really believed, when I say background, I was baptized as an Anglican baby and never darkened the door of a church again. But I still counted myself an Anglican until I was converted at the age of 20 to Christ. I just believed because I'd been baptized that that was enough. The baby had been done. My mother did the baby. This was the way you thought of it. Let's get the baby done. So you have this big party and now you're done, and that makes you fit for heaven.

Even though I thought my baptism would get me into heaven because I was an Anglican, I was also muddled up because my Anglican church didn't teach that. I just got that idea from somewhere or other. I also got the idea that now I had to do a lot of good things, and when I got to heaven there was going to be a great big scale up there. All the good things I'd done would be piled up on this side of the scale. There's a verse in the Scriptures in the Old Testament where God says to a king, "You've been weighed in the balances and found lacking, found wanting."

I had this idea—I don't know where I got it from, I never went to church or Sunday school—that God had a great big scale up there. All my good things, my good deeds, were going to be piled up on this side. If they outweighed all my bad deeds, which would be piled up on this side, and my good ones weighed more, then I'd go to heaven. My idea was to do as many good things, nice things, that good people should do. Then when I got to heaven, hopefully, they'd weigh more than the bad things.

God says in the Scriptures, "You have already been weighed in the balances and found lacking, found wanting." You'll never do enough good things. It's not of yourselves. What wonderful thing do I have to do to get this wonderful place in heaven then? Logically, wonderful things done by wonderful people who get to be invited to wonderful places like heaven—that's the way it should go. If I do enough wonderful things, I'll get to the wonderful place. Doing something wonderful, I discovered, doesn't do it because nobody can do enough. You'll never get enough to weigh that balance down.

We can see this very clearly in Mark's Gospel, Chapter 10. There was a rich young ruler. Luke's Gospel tells us he was a ruler, Matthew tells us he was young, and they all tell us he was rich. The Gospels add bits to the story of the rich young ruler. Jesus started on his way. A man ran up to him, fell on his knees. "Good teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "Why do you call me good?" said Jesus. "There's only one good and that's God."

A strange thing for the Lord Jesus to say when we know he was good, the only good man that ever lived, but he was turning him to God as a standard, recognizing perhaps that the man wouldn't recognize him in human form. He said, "There is only one good and that's God. Now let's measure you by him. You know the commandments: don't murder, commit adultery, steal, give false testimony, defraud, honor your father and mother." "Teacher," he said, "all these I have kept since I was a boy."

Jesus didn't challenge this. He didn't say, "No, you haven't. I know everything and you haven't." He accepted that statement and testimony, meaning that it was true. Standing in front of Jesus was an extraordinarily good person who all his life had done good things. Add to that moral goodness, probably better than anybody here, the fact that he was rich, the fact that he was young, and the fact that he was a ruler—money, power, youth—the things that we look for. He got everything.

Surely he was going to get to heaven. "What can I do to get to heaven, to make sure, teacher, now that I know I have eternal life?" That's a very important question. Jesus looked at him and loved him. Why did Jesus love him? Because he knew that what he said was true, and Jesus loves goodness in people. He loves good people doing good things. But he said, "One thing you lack." You see, he didn't get a B and he didn't even get a C. He got an A, but he didn't get an A-plus. He got an A-minus.

Jesus said to him in effect, "Unless you get an A, you can't come to heaven." When we're busy looking around measuring ourselves by our friends, don't do that. Measure yourself by God, for there is one good and that him alone. If you've got an A on this side of the scale, you'll go to heaven. But nobody's ever got an A. Even if at this time we said, "Jesus, from now on I'm never going to sin again and I'm going to do good things for the rest of my life," what about all the bad things you've done already? They're sitting there on the other side of the scale, and they're heavier than all the light good things. They can't make the balance tip.

What we need to do is to take all these good things off the scales and put on Jesus Christ. We'll find the weight and the worth of Christ will be credited to us for righteousness. How do we get over this concept that one thing we lack, especially when you're good people? I know so many good people, and the big question always comes to me: "Can't really good people go to heaven because they're nearly good enough?" But nearly good enough, the Bible says, isn't good enough. All have sinned and come short of God's standard—all, even the rich, wealthy, young, good ruler.

I certainly can't be measuring myself by him. I come short. Maybe we've got a B, or maybe we've got a C or a D or an F or an A-minus. Jesus said it's not good enough. Works don't work wonders. There was a journal poll taken. "Do you believe in God?" The political candidates wanted to know for their own ends, apparently. They put out this poll across good old religious Milwaukee. "Do you believe in heaven and hell? Based on your life up until today, where do you think you would go if you died tonight?"

If you had been on the other end of that journal poll, what would you have answered? 96% of the people all believed in God. That's good to know in Milwaukee. 83% on the basis of their life up to now said they would go to heaven. That's shocking to me. That 83% of the people running around Milwaukee think they're going to heaven isn't shocking. But to realize why they think they're going to heaven is very shocking because that's not the way to get there.

The Pope himself said, "Our task is to evangelize the baptized." It's amazing how we can be in a church structure somehow having absorbed things that our church doesn't even teach. For by grace are we saved through faith, and that not of ourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast, for God will not share his glory with another. Works don't work wonders for us. But a wonder worked a work, if you like. It was the cross of Christ that worked the work that's going to get us to heaven and that's going to see us there.

A good God produces good workers. After we have been saved by faith, we get on with the works. Because we are so intent in the evangelical church—now let me go to other denominations—because we are so intent in other denominations that we've been saved by grace, not of works, we've forgotten ever to do any. As soon as we become Christians, we fold our hands and give it up. Whereas before we were Christians, we were very busy doing good works, possibly for the wrong motives, but at least we were doing them.

Look at the evangelical church. They say, "Yes, but we don't want to give the wrong impression that we are so busy doing good works people look at us and think we're doing it to get to heaven, so we better not do any. Then they won't have any doubts at all." This is a very serious situation because we read back in Ephesians, we are saved apart from works to do them afterwards. Saved unto good works, saved apart from them but unto good works. This is very important indeed.

First of all, it says we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. A good God produces good workmanship. When he gave you Jesus, he gave you Jesus for a reason and it was a very practical one: to turn you into a workman or a workwoman. That's why he gave you Christ. I know he gave you Christ to forgive your sins and make sure you go to heaven. I know he gave you Christ to fulfill your needs. I know he gave you Christ to give you peace of mind. I know he gave you Christ to give you all these helps in your relationships with others.

Basically speaking, the Bible says he worked this salvation in you to turn you out a worker. That's what it says. We are his workmanship. He is crafting and creating us as the potter crafts the clay as a useful vessel for him to do something. Not to just hang around till we die and go to heaven. We haven't been saved for that. Like the lady said to Stuart once, "My Christianity is rock-firm this side. I know I have been saved. My Christianity is rock-firm that side. I know I will go to heaven when I die. It's like a bedstead, an old-fashioned iron bedstead, rock-firm both ends. But oh, in the middle, it's like a saggy old bed."

Then she said to my husband, "Can you help me get the sag out of my middle?" He said, "I don't know about that, madam." But you know what I mean. Here we are. Maybe our Christianity is rock-firm. We know, because we know what we know, that Jesus Christ is our savior. Our faith must be in him, not what we can do to get ourselves to heaven. We know that when we face God, it will be because of Jesus Christ working out our salvation on the cross of Calvary that we are there at all, poor sinners that we are.

But what about the middle? Is there a sag in our Christianity? We're just hanging around. What do we do? Well, this is what we do. See these? This is what we do. Hands. We are his workmanship. He created me to be a little worker. Good God produces good workers. Good workers produce good works unto good works. Work is worship. Think of Paul for a minute. Paul tent-made with his hands so that he wouldn't be a burden on the people he was ministering to across his travels.

He didn't want them to have to feed him and care for him and clothe him. In the middle of all the care of all the churches and all that traveling on foot and all the persecution he'd go through, he set up little businesses. If he was going to stay in a place for a time, he'd work with his hands so that he wouldn't be a burden on anyone else. He tent-made. Before Paul was a Christian, when he was a Jew, unsaved, persecuting Christians, he had been making tents.

In fact, as a Pharisee, he would be required to have a trade to support himself in his religious things. He was used to the idea of what we call tent-making. We have missionaries that are tent-making missionaries. They go to Nigeria and they get a job with the government. That's their tent-making as a teacher, as an engineer, their skills tent-make so that they are not a burden on the local church back home or the church overseas. This was a very exciting concept to both my husband and myself.

For years, Stuart stayed in the bank and that was his tent-making. He was a bank inspector. In all of his spare time, he was then able to take that money that his hands had worked for him, pushing a pen in the bank, and turn it into doing good things for other people in ministry. It was only when he could no longer do those two things side-by-side that something had to go, that he went into the Christian ministry. I got very excited about that too.

As we were setting up our little missionary home and Stuart began to travel a lot, I looked around for something to do because I'm his workmanship, created unto good works. I am by trade a teacher. I thought, "Well, maybe I can go back and teach and supplement our missionary income and have something to give." We are to labor with our hands that we might have to give. He who has been stealing—and I had been for 18 years, I had been stealing time and life from God for 18 years, so I'd been a thief—he who has been stealing must steal no longer but must work, doing something useful with his hands that he might have something to share with those in need.

Have to have, or have to give? I came to the point where I had a decision to make: would I teach for God or would I teach for me? Even though we could have very well done with the money in that situation. It was a huge battle for me. I wrote about this in my book, Snake in My Garden. It was a huge battle for me. Could I put in all the time and effort teaching without any remuneration that I might have to give to those in need? In the end, I was able to do that, and I did it for eight years. I tent-made.

Not only did I support myself, but we became the best nursery school in the whole area. They took films, they took me all over England showing other people how to set up nursery schools. We ended up with 250 kids in my nursery school. But that nursery school was put in a warehouse, hundreds of years old, grain warehouse—stinky, dirty, dead cats and dogs in the basement. Folks, these hands got to work. I remember looking at the dead cat and dog and opening my mouth to use my tongue to call one of the young men to remove them.

Then I shut my mouth and I looked at my hands and said, "What are these for?" So I removed them. Then I looked at the walls that needed whitewashing. Have you ever whitewashed? It's a dirty job. Four stories high, four coats each wall it took, and weeks. All the wood needed to be rubbed down and then varnished—four coats of varnish. Then everything needed painting. What was everything? I had to go find it. Beg, borrow, steal. We didn't have any money.

I went to the wood yard and said, "Can you give me all the little bits of wood that fall off the end that you burn?" and take them back to my teenagers and say, "Okay, for one month we're going to rub these bits down and make blocks for the children in the nursery school." They were the best set of wooden blocks I've seen anywhere in the world. Marvelous. Amazing what you can do with absolutely nothing. Paint? We didn't have money for paint. We started that nursery school, I think, with 50 pounds, which was a hundred dollars.

We spent every precious bit of that money to buy soap powder that we mixed dyes with that we begged from the dye works when they'd finished with them. They made beautiful powder paints. I don't know if you've ever painted with powder paints—marvelous for children. We didn't have brushes, but finger painting's very good, so we added glue. We didn't have Play-Doh, but flour will do it. We bought a big sack of flour and mixed it with water. Then some of the mothers lent us little rolling pins and we made that up every day.

We got the prize for the best nursery school in that part of the country in the end. The kids were wonderful. But I tell you, it was these hands that did it. I didn't just go and use my tongue; I had to work, and I had to work awfully hard. It was tent-making and so I wasn't paid for it. People are amazed at that, but I've wanted to model all my life that there are some of us that can choose to do that. It's wonderful. Can I testify to that? It's wonderful.

You see, our society and even our Christian society is so spoiled with only giving if you get something in return that I'm afraid it's got into the church as well. This is good works. I'm sorry to use myself as an illustration. I feel weird doing this. But as I thought about this, I thought that the warehouse story is a good illustration of what I'm trying to say. In no way do I want to say, "Aren't I wonderful and look at all this marvelous work that I'm doing?" I'm trying to show you my own struggles with putting into effect—is this a good work?

Listen. That God has before ordained that I should walk in it? That excited me. There are some things God has prepared beforehand for these hands to do. Now my job is to find out what they are and do them. Whether I get paid for it or not, whether I get appreciated or not, is totally irrelevant. Maybe I will, sometimes I do, and maybe I won't. But once that's settled that it doesn't matter, what a relief. Good workers produce good works.

What are the works, Jesus, you've told me to do? There's a marvelous hymn: "There's a work for Jesus only you can do." I used to sing that with all my heart as a young Christian. Faint not, grow not weary, he will strength renew. There's a work for Jesus only you can do. Not "there's a talk for Jesus only you can give, Jill." There's a work, and we have got to learn how to work. Yes, we have. Why? Because works are wise. There's a sense of purpose.

When I came to Jesus, I had no sense of purpose. When I became a Christian and I began to work, I had a sense of personhood, of value, of usefulness, of being needed. If what I do matters, what I am matters, I discovered. I looked for a need and I fulfilled it. How do you know what the works are? Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might. That means it'll be within reach of your life. I cannot do your good works, you cannot do mine.

Whatever your hand finds to do—that means it's under your nose, folks. Do it. How? With your might. Enthusiasm, effort. Look for the need and fulfill it. It wasn't hard for me when I came as a young teacher to Liverpool to see where the need was—back streets in Lime Street. How could I fulfill it? How could I reach those young people? You don't reach them in a vacuum. You don't reach them incidentally on the street. You might meet them on the streets, but they need somewhere to come.

There was a Chinese man. He had a Chinese rescue mission right down Lime Street, which is one of the worst areas of the whole world—Lime Street, Liverpool. He put his rescue mission right in the middle of it. When he had a rescue mission, he bought a condemned building. It was all the money he had, which was going to be pulled down in five years. He said, "We'll use it for five years." But it was a condemned building for good reason. We used it. But you don't want to bring people into a condemned building that's about to fall down and looks like it. You have to clean it.

Night after night, it was absolutely thrilling. We went out on the street and we begged, borrowed, and took all the things people would throw on the ash heap and took them back to the mission and we painted them and we scrubbed and we cleaned. We did it. How did we do it? With our hands, and it was just such a thrilling, thrilling thing. I can't tell you. I'm his workmanship, and he made me into a worker and he will. He made me look at these hands and say, "Boy, they're soft, Jill. I'll toughen them up. I'll show you what I gave those hands for you to do."

What a thrill it was, and it gave me this sense of value and usefulness and purposefulness. I was fulfilled because I discovered that what I did was sanctified. It was ordained by God. Did you see that? These good works that God has already thought out for you and me to find and do are chosen before the foundation of the world. Before you ever came into existence, he said, "They're going to find me and these are the things I want them to do."

Not "these are the things I want them to believe." Do. Divine doings. Now some of those you do every day. Jesus lived in Nazareth thirty years. Those were the good works God had before ordained that he should do when he came to live in a human body here on earth—Nazareth living. It helps to look at your housework through that sort of theology. Divine service conducted three times a day daily over your kitchen sink. Put it up there. Get somebody to decoupage it. Go to a craft club and do it. Write it, scribble it. Divine service conducted three times here daily.

Or if it's like my house, 25 times daily over the kitchen sink. Now you mean to tell me that washing up dishes is ordained of God, a good work before the foundation of the earth that I should do with my hands? Yes. Home obligations are obviously part of this. You don't need to look far. Whatever your hand finds to do—well, you'll find it to do in the kitchen sink, I presume. Mrs. Briscoe, Mom Briscoe taught me this more than anybody else on earth. Before we went to bed, she'd have all the shoes cleaned.

"Mother, why do we have to clean the shoes at night?" She'd give me the vacuum cleaner at 11 o'clock at night. "Go vacuum." "Why do we have to vacuum?" She'd give Stuart a duster, "Go rub over the windows." We said she used to stand in the house with a dustpan waiting for the dust to fall before it ever got there. We'd go to bed totally exhausted with all this housework because Jesus might come in the night. I said, "What?" "Yes, and if Jesus comes in the night, then people that come into the house will see how the house is. I want them to see that whatever I do, I do unto the Lord, and that divine service is conducted all the way through this house daily. Whether I'm cleaning the shoes, I'm cleaning them as if he's going to wear them. Whether I'm washing the dishes, I'm washing them so he can eat off them."

Now this is hugely convicting to people like me that isn't a very good housewife. Hugely convicting. But it helps. My daily doings that my hands do, my home obligations, my responsibility are part of those good works, and they glorify him. "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven." Works are wise. They give us a sense of well-being. Works are work. Did you know that? Think of the word. When I say work, what happens to you? Do you lie down till the feeling wears off?

Work! You know what I mean. That's a word that tells you what it's all about, isn't it? Work! Get our sleeves rolled up and do it. I tell you, one of the most frustrating things to me for the last five years of my life is that I have hurt my back and I cannot physically do some of the things I need to do. It is the most frustrating thing for me because I love to work physically, and I can't do a lot of the things now that I used to be able to do. But I can do other things, make up for it.

Work means effort, sweat, sacrifice, energy, cost. Whatever my hand finds, do it with my might. Commitment. "I have finished the work," says Jesus, "you gave me to do." Let me paraphrase that for us. When we get to heaven, will we be able to say like Jesus, "I finished the work you gave me to do. I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day because the night cometh when no man can work"? He was able to say all that.

Or will we have to say, "I've half finished the work you gave me to do," or "I haven't started the work you gave me to do"? What about Paul? "I've fought a good fight, I've finished the course, I've kept the faith." Will we say, "I fought half a fight, I finished the first lap, I've kept a little bit of the faith"? Finished, finished the work. Do you know what disturbs me more than anything else? We never follow through. Look around. How many women are here? How many started?

People just can't get here. Why? Because they're doing what with their hands? I don't know. I don't know. But I know my own heart and how commitment comes very hard to me. Cost, commitment, and the consequences. Some of us don't do any works because we think we're going to do it badly. Remember Stuart's thing around here: if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing badly. Remember that. Rather than not doing it at all. How do you learn to do something goodly? By doing it badly. Let me give you one story and then I'll leave you for the works that are waiting for you.

One story. I didn't know if I could get that warehouse ready to be a youth center that's turned that part of the world inside out. That four-story warehouse, where do we begin? Well, we got the walls done and everything, but then there was a basement. I wanted to turn it into an art cellar for the kids to come and do art at night. But it had a floor that needed concrete putting down. Now I have never laid concrete. But I got a book, and I found out that you could get it in bags called ready-mix concrete. Then you added water, mixed it up in buckets, and spread it.

Now I didn't need a PhD to do that. I needed a book and some hands. So I got the kids and I said, "On Thursday night we'll get down to the warehouse and we'll get this art cellar floor in. See you at six o'clock." They said fine. So I pick up the phone and I say, "Could I have one ton of ready-mix concrete? And would you leave it—" they said yes, "Where do you want it?" And I said, "Well, just leave it at the back door," which was the main thoroughfare of the warehouse in the main part of the street.

He said, "Are you sure you want it there?" and I said, "Yes, yes, that'll be fine." So he said, "Well, we'll have to leave it as we close up at five o'clock. What time are you going to be there?" And I said, "Oh, eight o'clock." So he said, "Well, all right." What I didn't realize was I had said one ton of ready-mix concrete, and he'd thought I said ready-mixed concrete. It was about this high, took the whole of the street on the way to the train station to the thoroughfare, and it was totally solid by eight o'clock.

So when I appeared, I thought, "That's funny." And then I realized what I'd done. I rang the hall. Stuart was in the middle of the evening service about 10 miles away. Major Thomas was singing the hymn. Notices were passed around, whispers. Some poor creature was pressed into service to preach the sermon. Stuart and Major split off the platform, gathered the workers—buckets, picks, shovels, pneumatic drills—and ran to the warehouse. For the next four hours, they tried to drill through the crust of the mound of concrete.

It was very embarrassing. After about two hours of doing all of this, Stuart said, "Where is Jill?" And somebody said, "I don't know, we haven't seen her. She did call to ask us to come now." Well, I was in the cellar crying in a corner hoping nobody would ever find me again. So that's my story. Now then, "Jill, you shouldn't have done that. You should have done—" you know, "How did you know how to do it?" I did it badly. I mean if you've ever wondered how we do these things, we do them badly.

And we in buckets till two o'clock in the morning, we had this human chain passing all this crumbled concrete when we got it moved down to the basement. Made a wonderful foundation for the floor. I tried to remind them we needed a foundation before we put the new concrete on, but they weren't very impressed with that. But you see, if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing even if you have to do it badly rather than not doing it at all.

And there are works waiting for us that we should walk in them. How do I know what they are? Whatever your hand finds, do it with your might. What did Jesus' hands do? They were carpenter's hands—rough hands, calloused hands. And yet they touched the leper and they were nailed to a cross. When Paul says, "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus," he used the word marks, stigmata, the wounds of the cross. And when I get to heaven, I want Jesus, which I know he'll do, to take my hands and turn them over and look at them.

I wonder what he'll say. My hands, may they be found busy when you come again, touching the lepers of society and healing their isolation and with a firm handshake welcoming those who haven't felt welcome for a very, very long time. And oh Lord, I haven't touched those I love for months. Hugs seem to belong to another world, to other families and relationships. So often my hands hang down useless, as if detached from my body. My hands are withered, Lord, shriveled with selfish endeavors.

Make them whole, but help me to know that they can only be so because of some rusty nails that fastened your hands securely in place, the place of sacrifice. That teaches me that hurting hands touched by Calvary accomplish much work for thee. See now, here are my hands, soft and white, not used to wear and tear. Oh Jesus Christ, when you come again, may you find my hands like yours—marked for service.

Oh Lord Jesus, I thank you as my memory has run back down the path of doing. Thank you. Thank you that you didn't just save me or save us to sit on spiritual cushions of ease, but that you gifted us with a body, a physical body equipped with hands to do the good works you've before ordained that we should walk in them. And Lord, we look at our hands and so many of our hands are white and soft, not marked for service at all, perhaps because we didn't know and hadn't realized or didn't know where to start or were frightened of doing it badly, and so it hasn't been done at all.

Lord, show me where to start. Color my daily doings in my home with the sense of the divine, and then help me to reach out my hands to the poor and the needy as you have already told me to do. I don't need to wonder what those things are, for you've told me to clothe the naked and feed the hungry. And Lord, we've had such wonderful illustrations of where we can begin: helping with the groceries, stuffing envelopes, writing letters to prisoners, wives, and children. Lord, we don't need to say where, perhaps we need to ask why that work hasn't been done. Forgive us.

Oh God, in this quiet moment, take our hands now, turn them over, open the fingers, look at them. Dear Jesus, may each pair of precious hands be marked for service when you come again. In Jesus' name, Amen.