Delight In Excellence
“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom” (Ecclesiastes 9:10).
There’s no chance you’ve heard of a trunsion. About eighty of them are used to connect the vertical cable of the Brooklyn Bridge to the road way at the river span where she really sways. A trunsion or gudgeon is just a steel joint assembly. It’s a boring uninteresting piece but all of them on the Brooklyn Bridge had been custom made, like every other part and piece of the eighth wonder of the world. When trunsions began to wear then on the Brooklyn Bridge in early 1969 they could only be replaced by remaking them by scratch.
To do so original drawings of the bridge would be needed. A young 29 year old native New Yorker named Francis Valentine got sent to a small brick building beneath the Brooklyn end of the Williamsburg Bridge for those plans. What he found was one of the most remarkable treasures in the whole history of building art - a collection totaling some ten thousand blue prints and drawings, all by hand, of all that went into the Brooklyn Bridge. Most drawings were signed WAR, which seemed odd to Valentine at first. Was there conflict at the construction of the bridge? Then the light went on. WAR was - Washington A. Roebling - the genius engineer who built the Brooklyn Bridge. These were his very own signed drawings of incalculable worth. Here is how historian David McCullough describes the work of these drawings:
“But then, in the last analysis, one comes to something in these drawings impossible to catalog, … It is the incredible care and concentration you feel in even the least of the drawings, the pride, the obvious love - love of materials, love for elegance in design, love of mathematics, of line, of light and shadow, of majestic scale, and yes, love of drawing - this passion in combination with an overriding insistence on order, on quality, that we of this very different century must inevitably stand in awe before. You feel what these people felt for their work and you can’t help but be drawn to them.”
Do you do what you do for God in the marketplace with this kind of passion for excellence? Whatever your hand finds to do as a housewife or pharmaceutical rep, teacher or soldier, or truck driver - do you do it with all your might? Martin Luther said, “The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.” How might the love of Jesus inspire us to delight in an excellence that honors God and inspires others in what we put our hands too?
BE GOD DEPENDENT. Solomon reminds us we are headed to the grave. We are utterly dependent upon God in his grace to get to heaven. All we do now is also only because of him for “in him we live and move and have our being.” The power of God’s grace in the heart of the humble believer who depends utterly on God produces incredible industry. You want to work harder than all the rest, “yet not you but the grace of God in you,” as Paul said. In a best ball golf tournament I played in one year a teammate arrived with a t-shirt displaying the words C-A-M-E-L on the back. “What’s up with the CAMEL t-shirt, bro?” “I am here to ‘carry you all’ again,” came the grinning reply. God is your camel. Each day acknowledge this in humility.
INTEGRITY MATTERS. In an age of image, a popular idea is, “Fake it ‘til you make it.” But rarely can you truly “make it” unless you have integrity. Be meticulously honest and trustworthy in what you do. Give a full day’s work. Always be punctual. “Thou shalt not steal.” We more often rob by slacking than by physically taking. Joseph went from pit to pinnacle in part because he was a man of godly integrity.
HONE YOUR SKILL WINSOMELY. “Do it with all your might,” Solomon says. Get really good at what you do. Develop your skills God has given you. Be willing to put in the time and repetition needed to achieve excellence but don’t be so driven you are a jerk to work with.
Piggly Wiggly’s best bagger and supermarket clerk four years running in Camden, SC finished bagging a large order with a long line still to go. As he lifted the final bag for the customer with his usual efficiency, the bottom of that brown bag gave way, sending the contents crashing to the floor. Everyone waited to see what the all-star employee would say and do. He stepped back, observed his mess, and then shaking his head with a smile he calmly said to the customer, “They just don’t make these bags like they used to. Sorry, that was supposed to happen in your driveway!” There is a winsomeness in the holiness of working hard but not hard headed.
The Municipal Archives now have the physical possession of the treasure of all the original drawings for the Brooklyn Bridge. The drawings give vivid testimony to all who worked on and built what was once the largest most celebrated bridge in the world. Interestingly enough, those workers had little or nothing to say about the bridge after it was built. Roebling, too, said almost nothing about it. All the speeches and editorials extolling its beauty and importance came from others. Roebling and others were, as they often said, “Happy to let the work speak for itself and to a greater one who graciously gave gifts to make it happen.” May this be our mantra too as we seek to build a bridge of excellence between what God has given us and the lives of others.
