Motivated and Magnanimous

“She puts her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle. She opens her hand to the poor and reaches out her hands to the needy.” – Proverbs 31:19-20

A certain phrase or tone can make me stop, sit down, and watch. I’m mesmerized whenever I hear a star athlete give a humble interview. It’s disorienting. We teach our stars—actors, models, athletes, politicians—that humility is the expected orbit of ordinary folk. But when you succeed at a high enough level, when people praise and flock around you all day, how could you not believe yourself better than the rest? We stop expecting humility, so it comes as a shock. When you stumble upon one of these beautiful paradoxes of humanity, like a boisterous engineer or sensitive warrior, it makes you stop and stare. It produces wonder. It flashes a reflection of Jesus.

That’s why we should admire the woman above, but the lesson is for us all. “She puts her hands to the distaff (a tool holding your unspun fiber), and her hands hold the spindle (the tool you use to twist the fiber into thread).” In other words, she works hard, and when she finishes one job, she goes on to the next. It’s easy to admire these titans of industry. They’re relentless, efficient, reliable. They’re movers and shakers because they believe in doing what it takes at great personal cost.

God made work before the Fall. When you work with care and diligence, you reflect God’s character. There are plenty of hard workers, however, and many reasons to work hard, some of which are only about you. What is rare is the sentence that comes next. “She opens her hand to the poor and reaches out her hands to the needy.”

Notice the poetic contrast of what she does her hands. When it comes to herself, her hands work tirelessly. When it comes to others, she opens her hands with generosity. That dual posture—a rigorous standard of industry for herself while treating others with liberality is nearly unheard of.  It speaks of an elevated character that approaches the center of who God is.

We worship a holy and righteous God. He cannot bear to look at evil and will never alter so much as a punctuation mark in his words (Habakkuk 1:13), yet he extends infinite grace to the worst of sinners (I Timothy 1:15). He is no man’s debtor but cancels mounds of debt owed to him (Matthew 18:21-35).

We all have certain skills or virtues we value and others that we let slide. A man may work with feverish energy, but struggle with patience. His natural instinct is to hold others to the same moral rubric, if not a stricter one—being unforgiving of laziness, while tolerating impatience and anger. But the character of Christ calls you to a higher standard. As you grow in his likeness, you become a disorienting and mesmerizing contradiction—holding yourself to a divine standard, while extending grace for others.

Why do all great people start with service?

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Last week, Brittany Shields offered a detailed review of my book, Who Am I on her book review site, Shelf Reflection. I was encouraged to see it was striking some of my targets. You can read the review here.

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