There are days when I wonder what it would be like to be a physician or a photojournalist or a museum curator. These are almost always days that coincide with the feeling that I’m not quite cutting it as a writer. There are probably men and women who always feel they are capable of the task before them. There are probably those who never feel as though the demands of vocation and their supply of talent are at odds. There are perhaps those among us who work and never grow weary—despite result or outcome. But I suspect many of us feel otherwise. No one ever tells you on career day that the glove may fit, but the work of your hands will still cause callouses.

Not long ago, I was reading about the making of the tabernacle; in Hebrew the word is mishkan, which means ‘dwelling place’ or ‘residence.’ The instructions given to Moses for the dwelling place they were to make for God were quite explicit, and excellence was clearly expected. The work of “a skilled craftsperson” was demanded for everything from the curtains and the woodwork to the oil and the incense. Much of the book of Exodus, in fact, reads like an employee manual or a progress report in which “every skilled person to whom the LORD has given skill and ability” labors to do the work and completes each task just as the LORD commanded.

In a moment of defeat, such a vision might make us feel all the more inadequate. The work of these skilled craftspeople appears everywhere, with no mention of deficiency, doubt, or difficulty: “For the entrance to the tent, they made a curtain of blue, purple, and scarlet yarn and finely twisted linen—the work of a fine embroiderer.”(1) “They also made the sacred anointing oil and the pure, fragrant incense—the work of a fine perfumer.“(2) “They hammered out thin sheets of gold and cut strands to be worked into the blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen—the work of a skilled craftsman.“(3) In the end, the various craftspeople of Israel walk away from their work knowing they had done well. Everything they set out to accomplish was completed exactly as the LORD had commanded.

Hopefully there are days when this can be said of the work of our hands—that we are skilled and at work in ways that seem right and meaningful and accomplished. Whether one thinks of themselves as religious or not, vocation can hold a sense of purpose and design, a sense that we are doing what we were created to do. For the Christian, vocation often includes a sense of call, a desire to work as God would have them work, to be men and women using the skills and abilities God has given. Yet, despite the language we use, chances are this sense of purposeful skill and accomplishment isn’t the case with every thing we do. We may very well labor with the skills we were born to use, and yet be without the affirmation that it was completed exactly as it could have been—or as God wanted. We may even walk away with a sense of defeat, the fatigue of calloused hands, or the complaint of unclear instruction. Yet perhaps for good reason, it is not always God’s way to make clear the weight of our labor.

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul explains: “For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it” (1 Corinthians 3:9-10). Paul describes the labor of Christ followers as work that is undergirded by a builder whose plans we don’t yet see. Nonetheless, we are called to build carefully and creatively and to labor well. It is reminiscent of the line in C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra: “One never can see, or not till long afterwards, why any one was selected for any job. And when one does, it is usually some reason that leaves no room for vanity. Certainly, it is never for what the man himself would have regarded as his chief qualifications.”(4)

Standing before the completed tabernacle, Moses inspected the work and saw that they had done it just as the LORD had commanded. So he blessed them and then set to work himself. When Moses finished everything God had instructed of him and all the labor was finished on the tabernacle, the completed work of the skilled craftspeople was transfigured by the arrival of God’s glory: “Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.”(5) The work of our hands has no better end.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Exodus 36:37.

(2) Exodus 37:29.

(3) Exodus 39:3.

(4) C.S. Lewis, Perelandra (New York: Scribner, 1972), 22.

(5) Exodus 40:34.

We typically fill our parties with people similar to ourselves. We invite into our homes those we work with, play with, or otherwise have something in common with. We celebrate with fellow graduates, entertain people from our neighborhoods, and open our doors to four year-olds when our own is turning four. Psychologists concur: we socialize with those in our circles because we have some ring of similarity that connects us.

The man in the parable of the great banquet is no different. The story is told in Luke chapter 14 of an affluent master of ceremonies who had invited a great number of people like himself to a meal. The list was likely distinguished; the guests were no doubt as prosperous socially as they were financially. Jesus sets the story at a critical time for all involved. The invitations had long been sent out and accepted. Places were now set; the table was now prepared. All was ready. Accordingly, the owner of the house sent his servant to bring in the guests. But none would come.

Anthropologists characterize the culture of Jesus’s day as an “honor/shame” society, where one’s quality of life was directly affected by the amount of honor or shame socially attributed to him or her. The public eye was paramount; every interaction either furthered or diminished one’s standing, honor, and regard in the eyes of the world.

Thus, in this parable, the master of the banquet had just been deliberately and publicly shamed. He was pushed to the margins of society and treated with the force of contempt. Hearers of this parable would have been waiting with baited breath to hear how this man would attempt to reclaim his honor. But scandalously, in fact, the master of the feast did not attempt to reverse his public shame. Altogether curiously, he embraced it.

Turning to the slave, the owner of the house appointed the servant with a new task: “Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and the poor and maimed and lame and blind bring in here.”(1) Returning, the servant reported, “Lord it has all occurred as you ordered, and still there is room.” So the owner of the house responded again, “Go out into the waves and hedges and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.”

The slave is told to do what he must to compel the masses to come, liberating the blind, the lame, and the excluded of their social status and stigma with an invitation to dine with none other than the master. It is a staggering portrayal of a God who is shamed by the rejection of his people, and yet continues to respond with lavish grace and scandalous invitation into his presence. The owner of the house has opened wide the doors. The feast is ready—and there is yet room.

The longing to belong in the right circles is a desire that touches us all. Even so, one only has to watch a group of kids on playground to see how easily our desire to belong is corrupted by our need to exclude: the inner circle is not inner if there are no outsiders. Lines of honor and shame are futile if the majority is not on the wrong side. But in this story, God scandalously breaks these lines of demarcation and stratification. The Father forever challenges the notion that his house will be filled only with the rich or the righteous or those without shame.

The banquet is ready and there is a call to fill the house with the lost and unworthy, the homeless, the blind, the outsiders and the out-of-place. The invitation Jesus presents is wide enough to scour the darkest of hedges and the depths of the city streets. Whether we find ourselves outside of the circle because we have rejected him or at the table communing with his guests, it is a thought to digest: the kingdom of God is like a great banquet. God’s compulsion is our nourishment. The feast is ready and there is still room.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Luke 14:21.

The massive Rembrandt measures over eight and a half feet tall and six and a half feet wide, compelling viewers with a larger than life scene. “The Return of the Prodigal Son” hangs on the walls of the St. Petersburg Hermitage Museum depicting Christian mercy, according to one curator, as if it were Rembrandt’s last “spiritual testament to the world.” Fittingly, it is one of the last paintings the artist ever completed and remains one of his most loved works.

The painting portrays the reunion of the wayward son and the waiting father as told in the Gospel of Luke. The elderly father is shown leaning in an embrace of his kneeling son in ragged shoes and torn clothes. With his back toward us, the son faces the father, his head bowed in regret. Clearly, it is the father Rembrandt wants us most to see. The aged man reaches out with both hands, his eyes on the son, his entire body inclining toward him.

It is understandable that viewers have spent hours looking at this solemn reflection of mercy and homecoming. The artist slows unstill minds to a scene where the parable’s characters are powerfully still. The kneeling son leans silently toward the father; the father calmly and tenderly leans toward the son. All is at rest. But in fact, this is far from the scene Jesus portrays in the parable itself.

The parable of the prodigal son is a long way from restful, and the father within it is anything but solemn and docile in his embrace of the wayward son. In the story Jesus tells, while the son was “still a long way off,” the father saw him and “was filled with compassion for him” (Luke 15:20). This father was literally moved by his compassion. The Greek word conveys an inward movement of concern and mercy, but this man was also clearly moved outwardly. The text is full of dramatic action. The father runs to the son, embraces him (literally, “falls upon his neck”), and kisses him. Unlike the depiction of Rembrandt, Jesus describes a scene far more abrupt and shocking. It is not the son who we find kneeling in this picture, but the father. The characters are not at rest but in radical motion. The father who runs to his wayward son runs without any assurance of repentance; he runs without any promise that the son is even home to stay.

There is a line in Jewish tradition that would likely have entered the minds of the first hearers of this parable. According to ancient thought, the manner of a person’s walk “shows what he is.”(1) Dignified men in this ancient culture simply did not run. In order to do so, long robes would have had to be lifted up, exposing the legs, which was inherently shameful. And yet, this father runs to the son who blatantly disrespected him, and hurriedly embraces the one who once disowned him. This man’s “walk” shows a substance that is nothing less than staggering. All measures of decorum, all levels of expectation, all rules of honor and shame are simply shattered by this father’s love. It would no doubt have been a disruptive picture for the audience who first heard the parable; it remains a disruptive picture today.

The portrait Jesus offers of the Father is one of action and immediacy. The image of any father running to meet the child who had made a mess of her life is compelling. But that it was so outlandish in this ancient context makes this depiction of his love all the more stirring. It brings to the forefront an image of God as one who is willing to embrace shame on our account. It brings to mind the image of a Son who endured the cross, scorning its shame, that we would not grow weary and lose heart.

God is moving toward us with a walk that thoroughly counters any thought of a distant and absent Father and boldly confronts any move away from Him. In his radical approach of our hearts, the Father reveals who He is. However far we wander, the God who laments even one lost soul is waiting and ready for our return. More than this, He is the Father who runs to close the distance.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Arland Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2000), 78.

When brazen thieves made off with Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” and “Madonna” several years ago, I wanted to join the search. The thought of adding Munch’s works to the secret galleries of art forever lost was upsetting to say the least. I pictured clumsy men dragging irreplaceable works through sullied alleyways and destructive elements. Like most, I dreaded the worst. Valuables cannot be trusted in the hands of thieves.

Of course, these men were conscious that they had in their possession something of value. If the paintings had meant nothing to them, they would never have been worth stealing. With the rest of the world, the thieves were well aware of the nature of the items they held in their hands. At the time of the burglary “The Scream” was estimated at 75 million and “Madonna” at 15 million. But for them “value” took on an entirely different meaning. In thieves’ hands, beauty is something to be exploited. It is smuggled into a dark underground and bartered for in secret. Its true value has been exchanged for something lesser.

One of the claims of the Christian worldview is that God has set his glory before the world. Since the beginning of time, Christians believe, God has shown his faithfulness, his goodness, his grandeur. God has placed his countenance upon us and trusted us with his Name. God sent his human Son to be with us and through him offered the assurance of new life, new robes, new creation. And repeatedly, we have taken his Name and exchanged it for something lesser. We have dragged it through sullied alleyways and destructive elements, holding this treasure like thieves, having lost the true value of all we hold. We follow God not as God but as something smaller—something exploited for pride or held as personal virtue.

When Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all of the vendors and money changers, he said in person what God had proclaimed for years: “Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you?” (Jeremiah 7:11). Jesus not only addressed the merchants, whose eyes were too focused on wages, but he denounced leaders and authorities, and pilgrims who had lost their footing. Thus, the prophet from Nazareth overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and he pronounced the words of God one more time: “It is written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a ‘den of robbers’” (Mark 11:17).

God’s Name cannot be trusted in hands of thieves—of this God is well aware. Yet even so, God continues to place it before us:

“For this is what the high and lofty one says—he who lives forever, whose name is holy:

‘I live in a high and holy place,

but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit,

to revive the spirit of the lowly

and to revive the heart of the contrite.

I will not accuse forever,

nor will I always be angry,

for then the spirit of man would grow faint before me—

the breath of man that I have created…

I have seen his ways, but I will heal him;

I will guide him and restore comfort to him’” (Isaiah 57:15-18).

Into grubby hands and deceptive hearts God continues to place his Spirit. This is the strange and difficult and interesting headline of Christianity. Though we behave like thieves, we are trusted with treasure.

To the delight of art aficionados across the world, Edvard Munch’s stolen masterworks were later brought home. There had been speculation that the thieves had burned the paintings to escape the police search, but fortunately, they did not. The frames were smashed in the getaway, but the pictures for the most part were returned unharmed. They remain again in loyal hands.

On the contrary, all of the riches of the glory of God have been placed in hands that are prone to exploit his mercy, abuse his Name, and exchange his glory for something far less significant. But even a den of robbers cannot stop the work of God. As Christ drove out the deceit of the temple so he continues to drive away our own lies that block us from seeing all that exists in our hands. The house of the Father is open to all, and we are not thieves but children.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

After fifteen years and nearly seventeen thousand miles, an unlikely fleet was set to make port on the beaches of Britain. On January 29, 1992, three massive containers on a cargo ship from Hong Kong crashed into the Pacific Ocean during a storm. The containers were filled with brightly colored bathtub toys bound for the United States. Instead, twenty-nine thousand little plastic ducks, frogs, beavers, and turtles began a journey that would be carefully monitored by children, oceanographers, environmentalists, and newscasters alike.

After 23 years, the tiny bobbing friends have traveled past Japan and back to Alaska, drifted deliberately down the Bering Strait and past the length of Greenland, and carefully floated down the eastern coastline of the United States. They have persevered through storms that would have left boats and crews in dire straits. They patiently endured four years frozen in ice as they crossed the Arctic Ocean. They have arrived at various intervals on various shores, faded and tattered by sun and surf, some with animal bites and barnacles to show for the journey. But each smiling plastic face seems to return with an ironic confession: the smallest vessels on tumultuous seas are not necessarily the most vulnerable.

Life is certainly far more than an attempt to keep our heads above water, and yet at times it feels a suited metaphor. Like tiny rubber ducks in an oceanic bathtub, we are tossed about the rocks of fear and anger, pulled under by currents of despair and disappointment, and broken at times by the journey. Human fragility is often as startlingly obvious as the image of a bath toy in the Bering Strait. We are at times almost averse to this fragility, whether seen in ourselves or in others. Fighting to keep afloat in an unpredictable sea, we take on distracting cargo and build defensive walls—anything that makes us feel less like tiny vessels lost at sea and more like giant ships passing in the night.

But metaphors of strength can be misleading, and vulnerability is often fearfully misunderstood. Though we may be reluctant to hear it, there is one tradition that clearly puts forth the story of a fragile and fleeting humanity. Jesus spoke readily of his own death and wept at the grave of a friend. The apostle Paul wrote of our bodies as “jars of clay,” words hastening back the image of David who lamented that he had become like “broken pottery.” Yet even well beyond the fragile images of humanity given in Scripture, the vulnerability of a God-man comes into focus and redefines all of our terms. The image of Jesus on the cross further turns our understanding of fragility on its head, challenges every discomfort with brokenness, and redirects our associations of weak and strong. In these images of Christ we discover a vulnerability of God that makes our greatest images of strength seem somehow childish. In his cruciform journey, God uses the weak to shame the strong, a suffering Son to meet the wounds of creation, and the vulnerable image of a broken savior who comes near.

The Christian profession is that it is by the Cross which we live, by a seemingly weak vessel, that we are brought home. Christ is not promised as a religious escape raft for the hard realities of this world. On the contrary, he calls to us in our weakness and reminds us that it is not unfamiliar to him. Through tumultuous waters, he beckons us to see there is potential in fragility, mercy in affliction, life beyond and within the journey that currently consumes us. Something like the image of tiny ducks arriving after an unlikely voyage, the journey of a soul to the cross is one in which Christ redirects our thoughts on vulnerability, the weak and the strong. And along the way, God is aware of every last and fragile vessel, going after even one that is lost, longing to gather us unto himself like a hen bringing together thousands of chicks under her wings.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.