Delight In The Labor Of Our Hands

Ecclesiastes 3:22   So I perceived that nothing is better than that a man should rejoice in his own works, for that is his heritage. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?

Follow the converging lines in Vermeer's  The Milkmaid ( use the link for an interactive presentation that is quite helpful).  Note the line from the wall through the basket and lamp down to the milk pouring from the pitcher.  Now start up from the pitcher and note the line that corresponds to the girls right arm and continues with her inclined head.  The two lines are a perfect "v".  Note how the converging lines of the table and the food sitting on it, the left side with the edge of the bread basket extending through the top of the jug converges at the same point and then completing a downward "v" on the right side there are the edges of the bread crusts and the side of the bowl into which the milk is being poured extended down through the exact line of the woman's blue apron.  Completing the task is a horizontal line through the woman's left arm to the elbow that extends through the pouring milk to the top of the jug.  What we see are two "v's" intersecting on a level plane. These  lines draw us into the action of the picture:  it is what the woman is doing rather than her person which is the artist's object.

Note the magnificent interplay of light and shadow, contrasting textures and delicate colors - of milk being poured!  The honor in the painting, as with the focal point, is not accorded to the milkmaid; her beauty is plain and her face is somewhat shadowed.  The honor in the painting is extended to the table set with food.  It  has the brightest lighting, it has the most lustrous detail, the bread and the milk are wondrously rendered.  The honor and the glory in this painting is on the table, it is the completed task, a table prepared and ready for the family or the guests, which communicates to us a certain sense of satisfaction and contentment.  Vermeer is showing us the nobility of honest labor and the joy and beauty which can accrue to even the simplest of tasks.
 

We do not know anything of the woman.  She may be a member of the household or a servant.  She may be serving the table because she loves the family or because it is her livelihood.  It doesn't matter.  What is important is that she has a task and that task can be done in such a way as to honor and glorify the God who makes no distinction between slave or free, rich or poor, Jew nor Gentile.  He is a God who can be served honorably and well in that which seems the most trivial of tasks.  Even the setting of a table can reflect the light of the sun, display the wonders of textured bread, and the pleasing symmetry of intentional arrangement.  There is a difference between a clutch of wild flowers, ripped from a hill, and haphazardly stuffed in a vase and the same flowers, clipped and deliberately arranged so as to have the colors complement each other, reflecting the glory of their Creator and His delight in what has been done with them.

Vermeer reminds us that there is "nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works."  The dominion of  man extends to the small as well as to the great tasks.  The Hoover Dam is, in the last analysis, no more grand than the honest work of a bricklayer's finished walk through a garden.  When Jesus said that "the first shall be last and the last first" He was reminding us that the congratulations of men do not necessarily correspond to the relative importance God assigns to the work accomplished .  Bach (as far as I know) dedicated all of his works, both small and great, to the glory of God and, in a sense, there were none which attained that goal in a greater fashion than others.  It is the outpouring of faith, the desire to honor beauty, majesty, truth and joy which transforms our works and make them glorious, not the fame which they attain.

The setting of a table, a task which is repeated every day, can be an act of worship extended through the hands of a person whose body has been offered up as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service. (Rom. 12:1)  In the face of all the urge to glamor, the pressure to purchase, the economic necessity of consumption , which surround us and incite and excite us in this Madison Avenue and Hollywood pressure cooker in which we live, that which is often lost is the glory of small tasks done well.  The honest contentment arising from something which perhaps only our eyes will see.  Much joy has been lost in our lives as a result.  Ecclesiastes & Vermeer are calling us to a different direction.

Comments

[beepbeepitsme]

I'm a fan of Vermeer as well. I was fortunate enough a few years ago to be in Paris at the Louvre. After the customary dash to see the Mona Lisa before the crowd arrived, my next biggest joy was to see "The Lacemaker" by Vermeer.

[Gadfly]

I am jealous. I spent a fair amount of time in Europe but I never got to Paris or the Louvre. I did spend quite a bit of time in the British Museum of Art in London though.

[beepbeepitsme]

"What you lose on the roundabout, you pick up on the swings."

Or, I haven't been to the British Museum, so there you go.