Master Craftsman Quotes

You weren't an accident. You weren't mass produced. You aren't an assembly-line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on the earth by the Master Craftsman.

When necessity demands it, I'm an excellent liar. Not the noblest of skills, but useful. It ties closely to acting and storytelling, and I learned all three from my father, who was a master craftsman.

Gold is for the mistress -- silver for the maid -- Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade." "Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall, "But Iron -- Cold Iron -- is master of them all.

That we ought to stop worrying that our every word is wrong and instead let the Master Craftsman wield us however He will. There may be stray chisel marks, the times we slip. But He'll still set the stone where it belongs. We just need to remember our lives are a monument to Him, not to ourselves.

...all our nourishment becomes ourselves; we eat ourselves into being... For every bite we take contains in itself all our organs, all that is included in the whole man, all of which he is constituted... We do not eat bone, blood vessels, ligaments, and seldom brain, heart, and entrails, nor fat, therefore bone does not make bone, nor brain make brain, but every bite contains all these. Bread is blood, but who sees it? It is fat, who sees it? ...for the master craftsman in the stomach is good. He can make iron out of brimstone: he is there daily and shapes the man according to his form.

Daphne du Maurier was the fifth-generation descendant of a French master craftsman who settled in England during the Revolution. The Glass-Blowers, the fictionalized story of his family, was originally published in 1963, but du Maurier first conceived of writing about her French forebears in the mid-1950s. She had recently completed her novel about Mary Anne Clarke, her famous great-great-grandmother, and a complementary work about the French side of her family seemed logical.

I came to define God by His handiwork: a craftsman who builds the hope of eternity into our genes, a master electrician and chemist who outfits our brains to access another dimension, a guru who rewards our spiritual efforts by allowing us to feel united with all things, an intelligence that pervades every atom and every nanosecond, all time and space, in the throes of death, or the ecstasy of life.

The emerging picture of the early Solar System does not resemble a stately progression of events designed to form the Earth. Instead, it looks as if our planet was made, and survived, by mere lucky chance,* amid unbelievable violence. Our world does not seem to have been sculpted by a master craftsman. Here too, there is no hint of a Universe made for us.

Steve had thought all this through with the metalogic of a philosopher and the meticulousness of a craftsman. He believed in simple materials, masterfully constructed.

You know..." Nora took a deep breath. "For a master warrior craftsman, you talk a lot of philosophical bullshit.

The man who uses his hands is a laborer. The man who uses his mind is a master. But the man who gives his heart to the passion is a craftsman.

That you may be strong be a craftsman in speech, for the strength of one is the tongue, and the speech of one is mightier than all fighting. –Written five thousand years ago by Ptahhotep

Annlaw was silent and intent; his lined face had brightened; the years had fallen away from it. Taran felt his heart fill with a joy that seemed to reach from the potter to himself, and in that moment understood that he was in the presence of a true master craftsman, greater than any he had ever known. "Fflewddur was wrong," Taran murmured. "If there is enchantment, it lies not in the potter's wheel but in the potter." "Enchantment there is none," answered Annlaw, never turning from his work. "A gift, perhaps, but a gift that bears with it much toil." "If I could make a thing of such beauty, it is a toil I would welcome," Taran said.

The process of industrialization is necessarily painful. It must involve the erosion of traditional patterns of life. But it was carried through with exceptional violence in Britain. It was unrelieved by any sense of national participation in communal effort, such as is found in countries undergoing a national revolution. Its ideology was that of the masters alone. Its messianic prophet was Dr Andrew Ure, who saw the factory system as ‘the great minister of civilization to the terraqueous globe’, diffusing ‘the life-blood of science and religion to myriads… still lying “in the region and shadow of death”.’ But those who served it did not feel this to be so, any more than those ‘myriads’ who were served. The experience of immiseration came upon them in a hundred different forms; for the field labourer, the loss of his common rights and the vestiges of village democracy; for the artisan, the loss of his craftsman’s status; for the weaver, the loss of livelihood and of independence; for the child, the loss of work and play in the home; for many groups of workers whose real earnings improved, the loss of security, leisure and the deterioration of the urban environment.

Crime was my career. I considered myself a craftsman | a true professional. Everybody has a craft they practice. Clean or dirty, safe or dangerous, we all have a viable skill and a part to play in the enigma that comprises our world. A professional is a person who earns moneys for practicing their craft. Having labored many years and becoming experienced in a particular skill, you learn the gradations and eventually reach the title of master.

For many years Minos has been lucky to have in his court the most gifted inventor, the most skilled artificer outside of the Olympian forges of Hephaestus. His name is Daedalus and he is capable of fashioning moving objects out of metal, bronze, wood, ivory and gemstones. He has mastered the art of tightly coiling leaves of steel into powerful springs, which control wheels and chains to form intricate and marvellous mechanisms that mark the passage of the hours with great precision and accuracy, or control the levels of watercourses. There is nothing this cunning man cannot contrive in his workshop. There are moving statues there, men and women animated by his skill, boxes that play music and devices that can awaken him in the morning. Even if only half the stories of what Daedalus can achieve are true then you can be certain that no more cunning and clever an inventor, architect and craftsman has ever walked this earth.

Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake, inimitable contriver, endower of Earth so gorgeous & different from the boring Moon, thank you for such as it is my gift. I have made up a morning prayer to you containing with precision everything that most matters. ‘According to Thy will’ the thing begins. It took me off & on two days. It does not aim at eloquence. You have come to my rescue again & again in my impassable, sometimes despairing years. You have allowed my brilliant friends to destroy themselves and I am still here, severely damaged, but functioning. Unknowable, as I am unknown to my guinea pigs: how can I ‘love’ you? I only as far as gratitude & awe confidently & absolutely go. I have no idea whether we live again. It doesn’t seem likely from either the scientific or the philosophical point of view but certainly all things are possible to you, and I believe as fixedly in the Resurrection-appearances to Peter and to Paul as I believe I sit in this blue chair. Only that may have been a special case to establish their initiatory faith. Whatever your end may be, accept my amazement. May I stand until death forever at attention for any your least instruction or enlightenment. I even feel sure you will assist me again, Master of insight & beauty.

Indeed, equal amounts of research support both assertions: that mentorship works and that it doesn’t. Mentoring programs break down in the workplace so often that scholarly research contradicts itself about the value of mentoring at all, and prompts Harvard Business Review articles with titles such as “Why Mentoring Doesn’t Work.” The mentorship slip is illustrated well by family businesses: 70 percent of them fail when passed to the second generation. A business-owner parent is in a perfect spot to mentor his or her child to run a company. And yet, sometime between mentorship and the business handoff, something critical doesn’t stick. One of the most tantalizing ideas about training with a master is that the master can help her protégé skip several steps up the ladder. Sometimes this ends up producing Aristotle. But sometimes it produces Icarus, to whom his father and master craftsman Daedalus of Greek mythology gave wings; Icarus then flew too high too fast and died. Jimmy Fallon’s mentor, one of the best-connected managers Jimmy could have for his SNL dream, served him up on a platter to SNL auditions in a fraction of the expected time it should take a new comedian to get there. But Jimmy didn’t cut it—yet. There was still one more ingredient, the one that makes the difference between rapid-rising protégés who soar and those who melt their wings and crash. III.

It has been noted in various quarters that the half-illiterate Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari never recorded the exact plans or dimensions for how to make one of his famous instruments. This might have been a commercial decision (during the earliest years of the 1700s, Stradivari’s violins were in high demand and open to being copied by other luthiers). But it might also have been because, well, Stradivari didn’t know exactly how to record its dimensions, its weight, and its balance. I mean, he knew how to create a violin with his hands and his fingers but maybe not in figures he kept in his head. Today, those violins, named after the Latinized form of his name, Stradivarius, are considered priceless. It is believed there are only around five hundred of them still in existence, some of which have been submitted to the most intense scientific examination in an attempt to reproduce their extraordinary sound quality. But no one has been able to replicate Stradivari’s craftsmanship. They’ve worked out that he used spruce for the top, willow for the internal blocks and linings, and maple for the back, ribs, and neck. They’ve figured out that he also treated the wood with several types of minerals, including potassium borate, sodium and potassium silicate, as well as a handmade varnish that appears to have been composed of gum arabic, honey, and egg white. But they still can’t replicate a Stradivarius. The genius craftsman never once recorded his technique for posterity. Instead, he passed on his knowledge to a number of his apprentices through what the philosopher Michael Polyani called “elbow learning.” This is the process where a protégé is trained in a new art or skill by sitting at the elbow of a master and by learning the craft through doing it, copying it, not simply by reading about it. The apprentices of the great Stradivari didn’t learn their craft from books or manuals but by sitting at his elbow and feeling the wood as he felt it to assess its length, its balance, and its timbre right there in their fingertips. All the learning happened at his elbow, and all the knowledge was contained in his fingers. In his book Personal Knowledge, Polyani wrote, “Practical wisdom is more truly embodied in action than expressed in rules of action.”1 By that he meant that we learn as Stradivari’s protégés did, by feeling the weight of a piece of wood, not by reading the prescribed measurements in a manual. Polyani continues, To learn by example is to submit to authority. You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things even when you cannot analyze and account in detail for its effectiveness. By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another.

The state of you,’ Senan says in disgust. ‘I’m grand,’ Bobby says, miffed. ‘Mr Dwyer,’ Mart tells Cal, ‘is the finest distiller in three counties. A master craftsman, so he is.’ Malachy smiles modestly. ‘Every now and then, when Malachy has a particularly fine product on his hands, he’s gracious enough to bring some of it in here to share with us. As a service to the community, you might say. I thought you deserved an opportunity to sample his wares.’ ‘I’m honoured,’ Cal says. ‘Although I feel like if I had any sense I’d be scared, too.’ ‘Ah, no,’ Malachy says soothingly. ‘It’s a lovely batch.’ He produces, from under the table, a shot glass and a two-litre Lucozade bottle half-full of clear liquid. He pours Cal a shot, careful not to spill a drop, and hands it over. ‘Now,’ he says. The rest of the men watch, grinning in a way that Cal doesn’t find reassuring. The liquor smells suspiciously innocuous. ‘For Jaysus’ sake, don’t be savouring the bloody bouquet,’ Mart orders him. ‘Knock that back.’ Cal knocks it back. He’s expecting it to go down like kerosene, but it tastes of almost nothing, and the burn doesn’t have enough harshness even to make him grimace. ‘That’s good stuff,’ he says. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Mart says. ‘Smooth as cream. This fella’s an artist.’ Right then the poteen hits Cal; the banquette turns insubstantial beneath him and the room circles in slow jerks. ‘Whoo!’ he says, shaking his head. The alcove roars with laughter, which comes to Cal as a pulsing jumble of sound some distance away. ‘That’s some serious firepower you got there,’ he says. ‘Sure, that was only to give you the flavour of it,’ Malachy explains. ‘Wait till you get started.’ ‘Last year,’ Senan tells Cal, jerking a thumb at Bobby, ‘this fella here, after a few goes of that stuff—’ ‘Ah, now,’ Bobby protests. People are grinning. ‘—he got up out of that seat and started shouting at the lot of us to bring him to a priest. Wanted to make his confession. At two o’clock in the morning.’ ‘What’d you done?’ Cal asks Bobby. He’s not sure whether Bobby will hear

He wanted a single entrance to the building so that we saw each other as we entered. We had meeting rooms, restrooms, a mailroom, three theaters, a game area, and an eating area all at the center in our atrium (where to this day, everyone gathers to eat, play ping pong, or be briefed by Pixar’s leaders on the company’s goings on). This all resulted in cross-traffic—people encountered each other all day long, inadvertently, which meant a better flow of communication and increased the possibility of chance encounters. You felt the energy in the building. Steve had thought all this through with the metalogic of a philosopher and the meticulousness of a craftsman. He believed in simple materials, masterfully constructed. He wanted all the steel exposed, not painted. He wanted glass doors to be flush with the walls.

The Holy Spirit is a master craftsman in fashioning us after the likeness of Christ. He uses many different methods, many tools. Trouble is one of His tools, a precious tool. As you look at the pattern of your own life, and you see trouble staring you in the face, consider that God has sent it for a very special purpose: to expose your weakness so that you can learn to draw on the strength of Christ.

Science: Science is the art of establishing models. These models established axiom, postulate, and priori. If supported by experiments continue to this model. These models around technology is extended and improved. In some cases, they may try and change our technology models. Cannot reach the end of science. After our terms of science renews itself every new perspective. Therefore, a bride wearing a veil as we face a different face when we remove every veil. Therefore, every scientist is a master craftsman.

You weren’t an accident. You weren’t mass produced. You aren’t an assembly-line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on the Earth by the Master Craftsman.

Like the craftsman, expect to add to your toolbox regularly. Always be on the lookout for better ways of doing things.

Emperor's Soul pg 123: "Attempts to Forge the window to a better version of itself had repeatedly failed; each time, after five minutes or so, the window had reverted to its cracked, gap-sided self. Then Shai had found a bit of colored glass rammed into one side of the frame. The window, she realized, had once been a stained glass piece, like many in the palace. It had been broken, and whatever had shattered the window had also bent the frame, producing those gaps that let in the frigid breeze. Rather than repairing it as it had been meant to be, someone had put ordinary glass into the window and left it to crack. A stamp from Shai in the bottom right corner had stored the window, rewriting its history so that a caring master craftsman had discovered the fallen window and remade it. That seal had taken immediately. Even after ll this time, the window had seen itself as something beautiful.

The sun nurtures and vitalizes the trees and flowers. It does so by giving away its light. But in the end, in which direction do they grow? So it is with a master craftsman like Liu Bang. After placing individuals in positions that fully realize their potential, he secures harmony among them by giving them all credit for their distinctive achievements. And in the end, as the trees and flowers grow toward the sun, individuals grow toward Liu Bang with devotion.

Is it not the sturdiness of the spokes?” they replied. “Then why is it that two wheels made of identical spokes differ in strength?” asked the master. “See beyond what is seen. Never forget that a wheel is made not only of spokes, but also of the space between the spokes. Sturdy spokes poorly placed make a weak wheel. Whether their full potential is realized depends on the harmony between them. The essence of wheel-making lies in the craftman’s ability to conceive and create the space that holds and balances the spokes within the wheel. Think now, who is the craftsman here?” After a long silence, one of the disciples asked, “But master, how does a craftsman secure the harmony among the spokes?

The work no master may subject Save He to whom the whole is known, Being Himself the Architect, The Craftsman and the Corner-stone. Then, when the greatest and the least Have finished all their labouring And sit together at the feast, You shall behold a wonder thing: The Maker of the men that make Will stoop between the cherubim, The towel and the basin take, And serve the servants who serve Him. The Architect and Craftsman both Agreed, the Stone had spoken well; Bound them to service by an oath And each to his own labour fell.

Acclaim for the past works of Charles Martin “Beautiful writing . . . offers hope and redemption without too-neat resolution.” —Publishers Weekly regarding Maggie “. . . charming characters and twists that keep the pages turning.” —Southern Living, regarding When Crickets Cry Southern Living Book-of-the-Month selection, April 2006 “How is Charles Martin able to take mere words and breathe such vibrant life into them? Each character is drawn with an artist’s attention to detail, beauty and purpose. Readers won’t want the story to end because that means leaving these lovable people who have become so much more than just a name in a book.” —inthelibraryreviews.net regarding When Crickets Cry “[The Dead Don’t Dance is] an absorbing read for fans of faith-based fiction . . . [with] delightfully quirky characters . . . [who] are ingeniously imaginative creations.” —Publishers Weekly “[In When Crickets Cry,] Martin has created highly developed characters, lifelike dialogue, and a well-crafted story.” —Christian Book Previews.com “Martin spins an engaging story about healing and the triumph of love . . . Filled with delightful local color.” —Publishers Weekly regarding Wrapped in Rain “[O]ne of the best books I’ve been asked to review, and certainly the best one this year!” — bestfiction.tripod.com regarding When Crickets Cry “Charles Martin has proven himself a master craftsman. Double the story-telling ability of Nicholas Sparks, throw in hints of Michael Crichton and Don J. Snyder, and you have Charles Martin.

The original Society of the Wise, which was your actual official name for the Folly, had been proudly part of the Enlightenment. God, if he existed, was the ultimate master craftsman who had set the world in motion, with fixed immutable laws, and then left it to get on with things. They saw angels and devils as abstract concepts and held that anything wandering around with a halo, wings, or a pitchfork was either an uppity fae, a con man, or a mountebank.

proudly part of the Enlightenment. God, if he existed, was the ultimate master craftsman who had set the world in motion, with fixed immutable laws, and then left it to get on with things. They saw angels and devils as abstract concepts and held that anything wandering around with a halo, wings, or a pitchfork was either an uppity fae, a con man, or a mountebank.

This is something I have frequently encountered in my research: an engineer or IT expert working for a car manufacturer enjoys a senior professional position, a good income and a high level of security. But alongside the plant where he works there are now other research and development service companies, where engineers and IT experts work for the same car manufacturer, but on a subcontract basis. They also earn well, but not quite as well as their colleagues employed directly by the main firm, nor do they enjoy the same participation rights. For many highly qualified staff, activity of this kind is quite attractive, up to a certain point. As long as they are young and flexible, they value working for a good salary in different places for a different firm each time. Even a master craftsman, employed by an agency, opined in an interview: ‘When you’re young, you think: never mind, I have two good hands.’ But this generally changes over the years. Then the need for greater security makes itself felt even among engineers, especially if they want to start a family.

Creator God, we thank You,” Lamech prayed, and Emzara looked up toward the heavens. “Thank You for bringing us to this place. We offer up praise to You for Your mighty works. You have continuously shown us Your faithfulness. Like a guard, You have preserved us from the evil intentions of our enemies. “We praise You for new life. Like a farmer, You will tend to young Japheth and Rayneh as they flourish and grow. Help us to train them in Your ways. “Like a master craftsman, You have a plan for everything and everyone here. You guide and direct us and prepared this place long before we arrived. We marvel at the perfection of Your ways, even though we do not fully understand them. Please continue to watch over and bless us. May Your holiness and mercy be ever before our eyes, and may the paths we tread be pleasing in Your sight.

If you are a craftsman you will find the Bible placed in your workshop, in your hands, in your heart; it teaches and preaches how you ought to treat your neighbor. Only look at your tools, your needle, your thimble, your beer barrel, your articles of trade, your scales, your measures, and you will find this saying written on them…“use me toward your neighbor as you would want him to act toward you with that which is his.” MARTIN LUTHER

He had the kind of handsome face that one rarely encountered apart from in works of art. His features might have been chiselled by a master craftsman. [...] Poirot wondered if McCrodden had sought to cancel out the advantages that nature had bestowed on him [...] by making himself look as repellent as possible.

It’s not reliving, it’s . . . ritual. How can I put it? These days, particularly here, we’re always encouraged to try new things. To be innovative, to be inventive. Novelty has inherent value. How I grew up, it was different. In Japan, to be a master craftsman is not to try anything new. It is to pick one thing and perfect it. There are chefs who devote an entire lifetime to making one specific type of sushi. Blacksmiths who make only one knife, over and over and over again, seeking impossible perfection. Everyone here is obsessed with moving on, with the new. They forget about their connection to the past. This . . .” She pointed at the netsuke. “It’s like a seed—it carries the past inside of it. Through it, our memories are allowed to grow and flourish. It’s how we remember who we are: culturally, individually, spiritually. Through ritual.

Every child is born of a father and mother. But what about the first father and mother? Where did they come from? How were they born?” Diarmid shrugged. “I suppose I never gave it much thought.”“An important matter to consider. If we don’t know where we are from, it is immensely difficult to tell where we are going.” “According to our legends, Ask and Embla were first molded from earthen clay. The All Father, the master craftsman and creator of all creatures, took earth into his hands and carefully formed our flesh. Our lives and every member. Thus the earth itself became our mother, the soil the very womb from which we were born. When the All Father commanded, when he breathed upon the clay form of man, life entered the body. These clay forms were known, in legend, as Ask and Embla. “They were beautiful beyond description, the finest of all the All Father’s creatures. The closest of all in resemblance to the All Father’s heart. So he made them his stewards. His representations. He charged them to assume care for all the earth, all creatures. Not to rule them, but to guide them, serve them, express the All Father’s love and goodness unto all.

If we look at depictions of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, or the Wedding at Cana, or the Sermon on the Mount, there is far more variability in how Renaissance painters imagined the scenes. So why this strict adherence to form in the case of the Annunciation? I would argue (and have argued; see Renaissance Quarterly volume XX, issue 3) that for the Renaissance masters the Annunciation was the equivalent of the sonnet for the Elizabethan poets: an artistic endeavor with strict rules that tested the ingenuity of the craftsman and allowed him to showcase his talents to his peers. The Annunciation was the perfect subject matter for such a game because it simultaneously required the rendition of a landscape in the distance and an architectural space up close, interior and exterior light, the human and divine forms, and the varied textures of fabric, feathers, and a flower. In other words, if one could paint an Annunciation, one could paint anything. Needless to say, in tackling his Annunciation, DiDomenico followed form.

This is a craftsman cabin, built for my great-grandfather by masters, not one of the more usual settler’s shacks made from whatever came to hand and which have long since rotted away, and good riddance.” His smile was real this time. “You always have been a snob, Torvingen.” “I like well-made things.

A Master Craftsman of Acting, like Daniel Day-Lewis, spends years selecting, preparing, and acting for just a single film. He is not like Nicolas Cage who always just plays Nicolas Cage in every film.

Watching McGraw go through his repertoire of pitches, observing his seriousness and diligence, I understood that my cousin was more than a budding major leaguer. He was a dedicated craftsman, and the rewards he’d gained from hard work went far beyond mastering a slider and a change. He’d mastered himself. He didn’t work hard merely because he was talented, but because he knew that hard work was the right path for a man, the only path. He wasn’t paralyzed, as I was, by the fear of making a mistake. When he bounced a pitch in front of me, or threw it over my head, he didn’t care. He was experimenting, exploring, finding himself, and finding his way by trial and error to a kind of truth. No matter how foolish he looked on a pitch, no matter how badly he missed the target, with the next pitch he was focused, confident, relaxed

Hirsch notes that Paul’s use of master builder “is loaded with notions of design, innovation and strategic craftsmanship.” God’s house is neither a Craftsman prefabricated home ordered from of the Sears catalogue, nor a flat-packed vision to build an Ikea church. Paul learned from experience that each church plant would incarnate Christ differently depending on the gift matrix of the community in which he planted it. What many call vision is actually the strategic organization of the gifts of God’s people.

Computers are useless,” said Picasso. “They can only give you answers.” Computers aren’t supposed to be creative; they’re supposed to do what you tell them to. If what you tell them to do is be creative, you get machine learning. A learning algorithm is like a master craftsman: every one of its productions is different and exquisitely tailored to the customer’s needs.

If a code writer considered himself a master craftsman, a tester saw himself as a marauder, probing for weak points in code, then cruelly exploiting them. The dominant technique was uncomplicated: Stress a program until it broke.

He picked up a lightly varnished violin and held it up to the light. “This one has had the first ground layer applied. See, I’ll share a secret with you—one I learned from a master craftsman in Vermont.” She came closer at his urging. “The secret is in the ground coat of varnish. It must be mixed with minerals, such as silica and alumina. And then the subsequent coats of walnut and linseed oil must be sun-thickened.” He pointed to a row of glass jars filled with amber oils lining the windowsill.

Every craftsman starts his or her journey with a basic set of good-quality tools. A woodworker might need rules, gauges, a couple of saws, some good planes, fine chisels, drills and braces, mallets, and clamps. These tools will be lovingly chosen, will be built to last, will perform specific jobs with little overlap with other tools, and, perhaps most importantly, will feel right in the budding woodworker's hands. Then begins a process of learning and adaptation. Each tool will have its own personality and quirks, and will need its own special handling. Each must be sharpened in a unique way, or held just so. Over time, each will wear according to use, until the grip looks like a mold of the woodworker's hands and the cutting surface aligns perfectly with the angle at which the tool is held. At this point, the tools become conduits from the craftsman's brain to the finished product—they have become extensions of his or her hands. Over time, the woodworker will add new tools, such as biscuit cutters, laser-guided miter saws, dovetail jigs—all wonderful pieces of technology. But you can bet that he or she will be happiest with one of those original tools in hand, feeling the plane sing as it slides through the wood.

Ric Furrer is a master craftsman whose work requires him to spend most of his day in a state of depth—even a small slip in concentration can ruin dozens of hours of effort. He’s also someone who clearly finds great meaning in his profession. This connection between deep work and a good life is familiar and widely accepted when considering the world of craftsmen. “The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy,” explains Matthew Crawford. And we believe him.

They point out that the Scriptures sometimes depict God as a mere craftsman, or as an avenging judge, as a king who rules in heaven, or even as a jealous master. But these images, they say, cannot compare with Jesus’ teaching that “God is spirit” or the “Father of Truth.”22

Here is the riddle: a master craftsman produces an organism with a massive design flaw. Something is wrong with this picture. Unless, of course, it's not one organism. It's two organisms, one inside the other. Depression is not evolution's failure at crafting humans. It's evolution's success at crafting another organism which uses human suffering as nutrition. The master craftsman didn't fail. He succeeded twice.

You weren’t an accident. You weren’t mass produced. You aren’t an assembly-line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on the Earth by the Master Craftsman. MAX LUCADO