An Unlikely Pairing

Seeing our work as service to others.

Reimagined artwork by David Marlow from original photo by Thomas Lipke

Reading works from two very different authors I made perhaps an unlikely connection between their ideas.

The first is an excerpt from a commencement address by David Foster Wallace entitled This is Water¹…

There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness.

One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer.

And the atheist says: “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God. It’s not like I haven’t ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn’t see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it.

I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out ‘Oh, God, if there is a God, I’m lost in this blizzard, and I’m gonna die if you don’t help me.’”

And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. “Well then, you must believe now,” he says, “After all, here you are, alive.”

The atheist just rolls his eyes. “No, man, all that was, was a couple of Eskimos who happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp.”

Foster uses this story to point to how closed-minded we all can be and locked into our worldview.

The connecting idea is from the late Timothy Keller in his book ‘Every Good Endeavor.’² He suggests our work, whatever it is, can be the hands of ‘God’ in service to our fellow humans.

Keller contends that we are God’s hands, much like the rescuers in the story from Wallace.

Whether you believe in a literal God or the Universe or nothing beyond what we see, there is a lesson here.

Keller points out it’s not by some miraculous force beyond space and time that we are fed.

We are fed by the farmer who tilled the field. By the truck driver who delivered the farm output to the store and by the people who diligently stock the shelves.

We are fed by the hands who prepare the meal.

In other words, we are fed by the work of our hands or the hands of others in concert. It is our work that provides.    

Wallace and Keller couldn’t have been more different in their lives or in their deaths.

Yet their two separate ideas came together for me and formed a new idea. An insight I had to share.

🌀Through our work, we are the ones who, without realizing it, are the answer to a prayer in the midst of a blizzard. 🌀

Working, being, living. Expressing our purpose in everything we do.

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1. https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/

2. https://www.amazon.com/Every-Good-Endeavor-Connecting-Your/dp/0525952705/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1691791802&sr=8-1