I Only Let Myself Make Things For Other People

You will do it for anybody.

Somebody needs a shelf, you are out there. Somebody's daughter is getting married and there is a thing that needs making, and you will give it four evenings and never mention it. A neighbor mentions in passing that the gate sticks and the gate does not stick by Thursday.

And you enjoy it. That is the part that makes this difficult to see. It is not martyrdom. You genuinely like being the man who makes the thing.

But go back through the last five years and find one thing you made that was for you.

Not the shelf that the kitchen needed. Not the box you made because there was a mess. Something with no purpose beyond that you wanted to make it, that belongs to nobody, that nobody thanked you for.

I think it takes a while to find one. I think, for some men, there is not one there at all.

Here is what I want to say gently, and I have said it to a lot of men on a lot of front steps.

You have built yourself a permission slip.

The gift is the permission. The recipient is the permission. As long as somebody else benefits, the hour is defensible, and a defensible hour is the only kind you know how to take. Which means you have never actually solved the guilt about unproductive time. You have found a way around it that works, and the cost of the workaround is that you are never the reason.

She hath wrought a good work

There is a scene at a table in Bethany that I have gone back to more times than almost any other.

A woman comes in with an alabaster box of ointment, very expensive, and breaks it and pours it on His head. And the room objects immediately, and the objection is not stupid.

They say it could have been sold and given to the poor. That is a good use. That is a defensible hour. And they are indignant at her, Mark says, which means the pressure in that room was real.

You are standing in a room where the objection was overruled rather than answered, and Mark 14:6 called the act itself a good work. The Holy Spirit is the one who says let her alone over a man who has been the room's accountant.

And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me. (Mark 14:6, King James Version)

Let her alone. She hath wrought a good work.

He does not defend it on the grounds of usefulness. He does not argue the economics. He calls the act itself good, and He tells the accountants in the room to leave her be.

You are standing in a room full of that same objection, and Mark 14:6 is where the objection gets overruled rather than answered. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a sentence spoken over a broken jar and lays it down on a man who cannot spend an evening on himself.

And notice who the objection was aimed at. Not the ointment. Her. Why trouble ye her.

You have a defender who tells the room to leave you alone, and it is already settled in the written word that the pressure was taken off the person and not just off the act. His Spirit is the one who says let her alone over a man who has been the room's accountant and its defendant at the same time.

The workaround has a cost

Now let me name the cost, because it is not obvious and it took me years to see it in myself.

When every hour of making has a recipient, the making becomes a service. And a service is judged. If she does not like it, the evening was wasted. If the gate does not close properly, four hours were spent badly. Every hour of making has been quietly attached to somebody else's reaction, which is the least stable ground there is.

And more than that. The quality of what you make is not a measure of the man, and neither is the gratitude that comes back, but under a permission slip system the gratitude is the receipt, and a man starts needing receipts.

You are free of every receipt tonight, and heaven has never once required a work of hands to have a beneficiary. Mark 14:6 calls a poured out jar a good work with no benefit to anybody who could use it, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that stand when a room says otherwise.

And I am not saying stop making things for people. That is a good part of you and it should stay. I am saying that it cannot be the only door.

You have permission to make something that belongs to nobody, and this is yours to keep rather than to hand over. It is written that He called it a good work while the room was calculating, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that word land on a man who calculates for a living.

Twenty minutes, and no recipient

So here is the ask, and the constraint is the whole thing.

Tonight, twenty minutes. Make something that is not for anybody.

Not for the house. Not for your wife. Not for a grandchild, not for Christmas, not for the church, not for a man at work who mentioned a thing. If a name comes to mind, stop and change the thing.

You have an evening with no beneficiary attached, and it is already settled in Mark 14:6 that a good work can have no useful outcome at all. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a permission slip from being quietly reissued.

Use what is already there. It does not have to be wood, and it does not have to be good.

And here is the hard part. Do not show it to anybody afterward. Not tonight. Because showing it makes it a gift again and hands it back to the system, and the whole exercise is to hold something that belongs to you.

You are covered while you spend an evening on yourself, and Mark 14:6 is the ground under that. She hath wrought a good work is written over an act with no useful outcome at all, and the Spirit of God is present at a kitchen table with a man who feels strange about it.