If I was a Carpenter, and you were my lady: My thoughts on reasons why Jesus was a carpenter

Photo by Ricky Kharawala on Unsplash

I wonder why God chose carpentry as the job for his son. I think about that. There are any number of professions that Jesus could have participated in or probably mastered during those years of working the ways that men (and women) work: with their hands and with their brains.

So why carpentry? Is it the simplicity of working with the wood? Starting with something rough and hiding surprises and, using various tools, uncovering those surprises and smoothing out the roughness and begin to find the beauty beyond. That which is in there, waiting to be discovered. Inside each and every piece of wood is a piece of pure and present beauty. This beauty is influenced and shaped by the way that the wood looks on the outside. The way that it looks on the outside is influenced and shaped by external events over which it has no control.

The patterns and whorls in the wood, the depth of the bark and the width of the rings.

Those happen completely apart from the carpenter's hands: the storms which bend the trunk, lean years with too little water or too little sunlight, the fat years full of grass and small animals and abundant joy in creation. All of these secrets waiting to be found by the carpenter's hands. And yet the wood, even, does not recognize…