The Furniture Maker Who Never Abandons a Piece

In 2019, master woodworker Sam Maloof's workshop in Alta Loma, California, became a museum — but his apprentice, Larry White, kept working. Larry once told a visiting journalist about a half-finished rocking chair that Sam had started before his death. The wood was rough-cut, the joints barely sketched. Most craftsmen would have scrapped it. Larry refused. "Sam began this chair," he said. "His hands shaped it first. I'm not going to abandon what he started."

Larry spent months studying Sam's pencil marks, his angles, the grain direction he'd chosen. He finished the chair not by imposing his own design but by honoring the original maker's intent. When it was done, it sold for $38,000 — not because Larry built it, but because Sam Maloof had begun it.

The psalmist David understood this kind of faithful craftsmanship from the other side — as the work itself. "The LORD will fulfill His purpose for me," he wrote. "Your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of Your hands."

You may feel half-finished today. Rough-cut. Barely sketched. But the Almighty who began shaping you has not walked away from the bench. He sees every pencil mark He made on your life, every grain He chose with intention. The Most High does not abandon His projects. He is not finished with you — and what He completes will bear the unmistakable signature of His hands.