I have a piece of white pine clamped in the vise on my workbench right now. It has a slight cup in the middle, just enough to rock a square, and the surface is rough from the mill. I'm holding a hand plane—an old Stanley No. 4 that belonged to my grandfather. The cast iron is cold, but the cherry wood tote has been smoothed by decades of palms, including mine. When you set the sole of the plane onto the wood, there is a moment of quiet resistance. If you push too fast, if you try to take off too much at once, the blade catches. It chokes. It tears the fibers of the wood, leaving a ragged scar instead of a clean face. But if you back the blade off, take your time, and push with a steady, rhythmic pressure, the plane sings. It's a low, sweet hiss, and a long, paper-thin curl of pine rises up through the mouth of the plane and drapes over your hand like a ribbon.

Does this happen to you in your daily work or your relationships? You try to force a conversation, or you try to rush a project, and suddenly everything tears? The grain resists. Instead of stepping back and sharpening your tools—which might mean taking a day off, praying, or just listening—you push harder. And the tear-out gets deeper. I spent twenty years in the trades as a construction carpenter before I went back to school for graphic design. On a commercial site, nobody asks you to make a hand plane sing. You're using a power planer, and the goal is speed: get it flat, get it nailed, and move on. For a long time, I carried that exact same hurry into the rest of my life. I rushed through conversations with my wife, through dinners with my kids, and through my prayers. But a hand plane doesn't care about your schedule. It only cares about the grain.

Slowing Down to the Speed of the Wood

We live in a world that sells us speed, but the things that actually matter—character, love, peace—don't grow at the speed of a fiber-optic cable. They grow at the speed of wood. I don't have it all figured out, and I'm not perfect, but I'm learning that patience isn't just waiting around for the timer to go off; it's the willingness to match your pace to the material in front of you. We want the wood flat, but we don't want to do the planing. We want the relationship deep, but we don't want the long, slow, sometimes boring hours of sitting together. We want maturity, but we don't want the decades of quiet consistency it takes to get there.

Lost time is never found again.
— Benjamin Franklin

The Carpenter of Nazareth

In the Gospel of Mark, there's a moment where Jesus returns to His hometown. The people who grew up with Him are astonished by His teaching, but they're also offended by it. They say, “Isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary...” (Mark 6:3, WEB). The Greek word is tekton, which means a builder, a craftsman, someone who works with wood, stone, or metal. Jesus didn't just appear on the scene at thirty years old as a fully formed public teacher. For the vast majority of His life on earth, He worked with His hands. He swept shavings. He fit joints together. He carried lumber. He knew the resistance of the grain and the patience required to plane a board flat.

The Creator of the universe spent eighteen years doing ordinary, dusty, repetitive work before He preached a single public sermon. That tells us something profound about the dignity of ordinary labor. It tells us that making is not a distraction from a spiritual life. Making is worship. If you have questions about Jesus, please ask—I'm always glad to talk about Him—but for now, just consider that He knows what it's like to have calloused hands and a sore back. He knows the slow work of building.

The Hidden Work Done Heartily

Paul wrote to the church in Colossae, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord, and not for men...” (Colossians 3:23, WEB). When you're planing a board by hand, you're not doing it for an audience. Once the table is assembled, nobody is going to look at the underside of the top or the inside of the aprons and ask how many passes of the plane it took to get them flat. The work is hidden. But you know. And the Lord knows.

Hearty work is work done with a quiet integrity that doesn't need a spotlight. It's choosing to do the hidden things well because we are made in the image of a Creator who looked at His creation—before anyone else was there to see it—and saw that it was good. If you want a soundtrack for this quiet kind of work, put on “Less Like Me” by Zach Williams. It's a good reminder that the goal of all our shaping and planing is to look a little more like the Carpenter of Nazareth, and a little less like our own rushed selves.

A Few Things Worth Trying

If you're looking for ways to build that kind of patience and presence in your own daily work, here are a few small practices that have helped me at the bench and at the computer:

1. Feel the grain first. Before you start planing—or before you step into a hard conversation—take a second to feel the surface. Find which way the grain is running. In life, this means paying attention to the context, the mood, and the quiet cues of the people around you instead of just forcing your own agenda.
2. Keep the blade sharp. A dull plane forces you to use brute strength, which leads to slips and tear-out. In our daily lives, sharpening the blade looks like rest. It looks like Sabbath. It looks like stepping away from the workbench to pray and recharge so we don't end up tearing the grain of our relationships out of sheer exhaustion.
3. Accept the tear-out. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to push too hard and tear the wood. When it happens, don't throw the board away. Back the blade off, take a deep breath, and plane it smooth again. Grace is the clean pass that clears up our rough edges.
4. Work for the Maker, not the crowd. Find satisfaction in the work that nobody else will ever see. The backs of the drawers, the inside of the frame, the quiet acts of kindness that don't get posted online. That's where craftsmanship really lives.

This Week's Small Invitation

This week, I want to invite you to do one thing with your hands without rushing. Maybe it's kneading bread, planting a seed in a flowerpot, washing the dishes by hand, or even whittling a stick. As you do it, feel the resistance of the material. Notice the speed it requires. Try not to think about the next thing on your list. Just be there in the making, and let it be a quiet prayer of gratitude to the Creator who shaped us from the dust. You don't have to have your whole life smoothed out. I certainly don't. My bench is covered in dust, and my character still has plenty of rough spots that need the plane. But each stroke is a fresh start.

Blessings.