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 It was an order from the Roman government – extra large nails.  The blacksmith knew what they were for, but business was business.  He fired up his forge, heated a cold slab of iron, and began the pounding of the glowing metal.  As was so often true, his customers wanted quality work, but they wanted it yesterday.  It was late in the evening when he plunged the last nail into the cooling water.  The Roman centurion would be there in the morning, first thing, to pick them up.  How could the blacksmith know that these nails would hold the Son of God to a cross – that it would his sins that would forgiven, while his Savior was held by his nails?
She had a reputation for quality work – there were no picks or skips in her weaves.  Her cloth wasn’t cheap – she aimed for the high end of the market.  Her customers were the elite woman of Jerusalem, and the aristocrats who prized her burial linen – it was the finest that could be had.  So it was no surprise when Joseph of Arimathea came by her market stall in a hurry one Friday afternoon.  He needed six yards of burial linen – he didn’t say why.  She was shrewd enough to eye his anxiety and knew he would not haggle.  She cut the cloth and called out the price – 100% over what she would normally settle for.  He didn’t bat an eye, but paid, took the cloth and hurried away.  She cursed herself for not asking for more – the man clearly would have paid whatever price she asked.  How could she know that her cloth, from her loom, would wrap the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords?
His hands were permanently curled, always ready to receive a chisel and hammer.  It was the fate of ever stone mason.  He had apprenticed during Herod’s great building expansion and had moved up from cutting building blocks to creating masterpieces.  As a Jew, he could never chisel a statue, for that would be a graven image.  But he could take stone outcrop, and fashion a tomb with gentle curves and smooth surfaces.  It was that kind of care that gave him a waiting list of customers. Just last week, he finished a project that a rich out-of towner whose dream was to be buried near the Temple.  He had been well paid, but it was time to start on another tomb.  It was near his last project, the one he had done for Joseph of Arimathea.  He heard that Joseph had not used that tomb for himself, but for some crazy rabbi from up north.  Funny what people do.  When he went to work that Sunday, after a Sabbath of rest, he noticed all the commotion by Joseph’s tomb – people running around, soldiers coming and going, even a priest or two dropping by.  How could he know that the tomb he carved out of a mountain would be used once – and then discarded by Jesus, who conquered death a little earlier in the day?
You never know when God will touch and use what passes through your hands.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.