The Carpenter's Hands

In 1987, a young furniture maker named Tomás Herrera walked into a workshop in Oaxaca, Mexico, and apprenticed himself to master woodworker Don Refugio. For three years, Tomás watched everything — the way Don Refugio held the chisel at a slight angle, the way he tested grain direction with his thumbnail before making a cut, even the way he blew sawdust from a joint before inspecting it. Tomás never decided to copy these habits. They simply became his own.

Years later, a customer visiting Tomás's shop in Puebla said something that stopped him mid-sentence: "You must have trained under Don Refugio. I can see him in your hands."

The Apostle John understood this principle at the deepest level. Writing to his friend Gaius, he had just described two men — Diotrephes, who hoarded power and slandered others, and Demetrius, whose life testified to goodness. Then John drew the line plainly: "Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God."

This is not a command to try harder. It is a revelation about apprenticeship. We inevitably begin to resemble whoever we watch most closely, whoever we give our hours to. Diotrephes had apprenticed himself to his own ambition. Demetrius had apprenticed himself to the Holy One.

The question John poses to every church, every leader, every believer is simply this: Whose hands can people see in yours?