Written by Dave Boller for  “Working for Christ” @   http://work4christ.wordpress.com/

http://work4christ.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/more-than-a-carpenter/

 ” ‘Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at him.” (Mark 6:3, NIV)

I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before, but the other day as I was reading through the Gospel of Mark, I stumbled across this verse. It stopped me dead in my tracks. We are told that Jesus, who was spending His time as a wandering teacher, came back to His hometown of Nazareth. The crowd listened to Him teach in the synagogue, and they were stunned because He was displaying such wisdom and power. In their eyes, Jesus was still a carpenter from Nazareth – not a preacher. Mark records the hometown crowd saying,  “and they took offense at him.”(Mark 6:3, NIV) That’s really hard for me to grasp. They took offense to Jesus! Really?

As I pondered these words, I began to reflect on the significance of Jesus spending so much time on earth working with his hands in a carpentry shop. Here was the Son of God sent to earth on a redemptive mission of seeking and saving the lost, of proclaiming the gospel – yet He spent the majority of His years on earth making things in a wood shop. Why was it the Father’s will for Jesus to spend so much time making things with His hands instead of gracing the Palestinian countryside, proclaiming the gospel and healing the multitudes?

Dallas Willard brings this refreshing perspective:

“If He were to come today as He did then, He could carry out His mission through any decent and useful occupation. He could be a clerk or accountant in a hardware store, a computer repairman, a banker, an editor, doctor, waiter, teacher, farm hand, lab technician, or construction worker. He could run a housecleaning service or repair automobiles. In other words, if He were to come today He could very well do what you do. He could very well live in your apartment or house, hold down your job, have your education and life prospects, and live within your family surroundings and time. None of this would be the least hindrance to the eternal kind of life that was His by nature and becomes available to us through Him.” (Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, New York: HarperCollins, 1998, pg 14)

Yes, Jesus was more than a carpenter, but His vocational calling to work as a carpenter speaks volumes about the importance of our day-to-day vocational work. We, too, are more than our occupations. We were created in God’s image and our job is to seek and save the lost, to proclaim the gospel, and to bring others into a closer relationship with our Savior.

Our job is to spend our days, “Working for Christ!”