In the tailoring trade there is an old joke about the tailor’s promise. “Come back on Friday,” the tailor says, and when you come back on Friday, the cloth is still folded on the shelf exactly where you left it. Everyone in Nigeria has a story about it. A wedding outfit collected on the morning of the wedding, still warm from the iron. A sleeve that was sewn on backwards. An aso-ebi that arrived two sizes too small with the explanation that “the material shrank.”
Chinyere built her business on being the exception to that joke. She ran a small workshop off Ogui Road in Enugu with two sewing machines, an overlocker and an apprentice, a quiet girl of nineteen who had come to her from Nsukka. Chinyere’s customers said she was the tailor who did not lie. If she said Friday, it was Friday. Her inside seams were finished as carefully as the outside. She would unpick a whole bodice at midnight rather than send out something she was ashamed of. Above her cutting table she had pinned a hand-lettered sign: Excellence or nothing.
Then came December, and the wedding season. She took thirty-one orders in three weeks, including a bride’s dress and the aso-ebi for both families. For four nights in a row she slept for about two hours. She stopped eating proper meals. She told her apprentice to go home at ten, then worked on alone until the call to prayer from the mosque near the market told her it was nearly dawn.
On the Thursday before the wedding, she stood up from the machine, felt the room tilt, and woke up on the floor with her apprentice screaming for the neighbours. By evening she was lying in a hospital bed on a drip. The doctor told her that her blood pressure was dangerously high and that her body had simply stopped cooperating. “Madam,” he said, “you are a tailor, not a generator.”
She told me later that what frightened her most was not the diagnosis. It was the thought that kept repeating itself as she lay there: They will say I am just like the others. And underneath that, older and deeper, she heard her father’s voice from the year she failed her university entrance exams for the second time: “So you will just be an ordinary tailor.”
PunchlineShe had been calling it excellence for years. Lying on that bed, she began to wonder whether some of it had been something else.
The two failures
When Christians talk about work, we usually warn against one failure: mediocrity. And we should. Mediocrity is the settled habit of doing the minimum. It is the report that is copied from last year with the dates changed, the patient whose file is not read before the consultation, the wiring that is “managed” because the inspector will not check, the lesson that is not prepared because the pupils will not know the difference. It is work done without care for the person who will receive it.
It is worth being honest about why mediocrity spreads. In a hard economy, where salaries arrive late, equipment is broken and good work often goes unrewarded while connections are promoted, many people quietly conclude that care is pointless. “Why should I kill myself for this company?” That feeling is understandable, and some of the grievances behind it are real and deserve to be addressed. But the believer has another reason for doing good work, one that does not depend on whether the company deserves it.
Scripture has no patience with mediocrity. “He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster” (Proverbs 18:9). The careless worker and the destroyer are relatives. One breaks things down; the other simply fails to build them up, and the result is much the same.
But there is a second failure that looks very like excellence from the outside. It is the drive that treats every task as a verdict on your worth. It cannot rest, cannot delegate, cannot forgive its own mistakes and cannot accept a human limit. It produces beautiful work, often for a long time, and then it produces collapse. Chinyere had rejected the first failure and fallen headlong into the second.
The believer is called to reject mediocrity. But the reason we reject it, and the place from which we reject it, make all the difference. Excellence that flows from a settled identity can last a lifetime. Excellence that is trying to create an identity will eventually demand more than any human body or soul can give.
Heartily, as to the Lord
Paul gives the foundation in his letter to the Colossians. He is writing to servants in Christian households, but the words reach far beyond them:
And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.
The first audience for these words were slaves in a Roman household. Paul was not approving that system, and in the same letter he tells masters to give their servants “that which is just and equal” (Colossians 4:1). What he gives those servants is a new way of seeing their work, and the principle applies even more naturally to a free employee or a self-employed craftsman like Chinyere.
“Whatsoever ye do.” The scope is total. Paul does not restrict the instruction to church work or to impressive work. Cooking, sweeping, sewing, bookkeeping, laying blocks and marking scripts are all included.
“Do it heartily.” The phrase in Greek is literally “from the soul.” It means wholeheartedly, with genuine engagement, putting yourself into it. It is the opposite of the half-present worker whose body is at the desk while his mind is elsewhere. This is where mediocrity is rejected.
“As to the Lord, and not unto men.” Here is the change of audience. The tailor who sews as to the Lord finishes the inside seam, because the Lord sees it even when the customer never turns the garment over. The clerk who files as to the Lord files correctly, even when nobody will check the cabinet for a year.
But notice the next phrase, because it carries the gospel: “Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance.” An inheritance is not a wage. You do not earn it by the hour. You receive it because of whose child you are. Paul is telling these servants, who had no legal inheritance of their own, that they are heirs of God. Their work does not purchase that standing. It expresses it.
“For ye serve the Lord Christ.” The Lord they serve is the one who has already made them His own. That is why the work can be wholehearted without being desperate. The servant who knows he is an heir can give his best without asking that best to justify his existence.
Skilled hands before kings
The book of Proverbs makes an observation that every working person has seen come true:
Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men .
The word translated diligent is the Hebrew mahir. It means skilled, quick, practised, ready. It is the same word used of Ezra, “a ready scribe in the law of Moses” (Ezra 7:6), and in the psalm where the writer says, “my tongue is the pen of a ready writer” (Psalm 45:1). The picture is of someone who has become genuinely good at what they do through practice and attention. The mahir scribe could write quickly and accurately because he had written thousands of lines before.
Such a person, Solomon says, “shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.” Mean men in older English does not mean cruel men. It means men of low rank, obscure people. Skill tends to rise. The craftsman whose work is reliable is eventually called to serve people of greater influence, because influential people need things done well.
Scripture shows this repeatedly. Joseph’s competence brought him from Potiphar’s house to the prison’s management to Pharaoh’s court. Daniel was preferred above the other administrators “because an excellent spirit was in him” (Daniel 6:3). David was brought to Saul’s court partly because he was “cunning in playing” the harp (1 Samuel 16:18).
We should read the proverb as a proverb, though. It describes how life generally works under God’s order. It is not a guaranteed formula. There are skilled people in Nigeria who have never stood before anyone of influence, because jobs went to the well connected, because a region was neglected, because a factory closed. The same Bible that says skill rises also says, as we will see, that “time and chance happeneth to them all.” Skill is worth pursuing for its own sake and for the sake of the people it serves, even when the king never sends for you.
Skill is a gift of the Spirit too
Many believers think of the Holy Spirit’s work only in terms of prayer, preaching and spiritual gifts in the church. The building of the tabernacle in the wilderness corrects that picture:
See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, And in cutting of stones, to set them , and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship.
Bezaleel is among the first people in Scripture of whom God says, “I have filled him with the spirit of God.” And what is the result of that filling? Not prophecy. Not preaching. Craftsmanship. “Wisdom, and... understanding, and... knowledge, and... all manner of workmanship.” He was to “devise cunning works,” which in the older English means skilful designs, and to work in gold, silver, brass, stone and timber.
God called Bezaleel by name. The call to make beautiful, precise, durable things was as personal as the call of a prophet. And God did not leave him alone with it. The next verse says, “I have given with him Aholiab” (Exodus 31:6), and that God had put wisdom into the hearts of all the wise-hearted workers. Excellent work in Scripture is rarely solitary. It is shared, taught and passed on.
This should dignify the craftsman, the engineer, the designer and the tailor. Your skill is not a lesser thing beside spiritual ministry. It can be a work of the Spirit of God. And it should humble us too. If skill is a gift, then it is not a trophy that proves our superiority over less skilled people. It is a trust.
NuggetYour skill can be a work of the Spirit of God. That makes it worth developing with care, and it means it was never meant to prove that you are worth something.
With thy might, for God now accepteth thy works
The most famous verse on wholehearted work comes from the book of Ecclesiastes, and it is usually quoted on its own. Read it in its setting, and it becomes far more beautiful:
Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
The Preacher has spent much of the book looking honestly at life “under the sun.” He has seen injustice, death, the frustration of labour and the way the wise and the foolish end up in the same grave. He does not pretend that work will give life its final meaning. And yet, in the middle of that sober realism, he turns to his reader and says: go and eat your bread with joy, “for God now accepteth thy works.”
The order is everything. Acceptance comes first. Then the Preacher speaks of joy, of clean garments and anointed heads, of loving one’s wife and receiving the good portion God gives in this life. And only then: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”
This is not a man working in order to be accepted. It is a man who has been accepted working with all his strength, because the opportunity is real and it will not last for ever. “For there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.” Life is short. The work that is in front of your hands today is the work you have been given. Do not do it half-heartedly while dreaming of some other work you would rather be doing.
Then the very next verse adds the necessary humility: “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11). Give the work your might, and leave the outcome with God. You can control the care you take with the dress. You cannot control whether the generator fails, the bride changes her mind or the economy collapses. Excellence is faithfulness with what is in your hand. It is not mastery over everything that happens afterwards.
For the New Covenant believer, that phrase “God now accepteth thy works” has found its deepest meaning in Christ. We are “accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:6). Our persons are received before any of our works are offered, and our imperfect works are received because our persons are in Him.
The heart that takes no rest in the night
Earlier in the same book, the Preacher describes a kind of work that he knew from personal experience:
For what hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun? For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity. There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.
“His heart taketh not rest in the night.” Many hardworking people know that sentence from the inside. You lie down but the mind keeps sewing, keeps calculating, keeps rehearsing tomorrow’s meeting and yesterday’s mistake. The Preacher had built houses, planted vineyards, gathered wealth and achieved everything he set out to achieve. He admits that “all was vanity and vexation of spirit” (Ecclesiastes 2:11). The achievements were real. They simply could not carry the weight he had placed on them.
That is the problem with achievement as the foundation of identity. It always needs another achievement. The award must be followed by a greater award. The perfect order must be followed by thirty-one more. If my worth depends on my excellence, then every mistake threatens my worth, every limit feels like a humiliation and every rest feels like falling behind.
And notice where the Preacher lands: “There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.” Enjoyment of work is a gift. It comes from God’s hand. It cannot be produced by striving harder.
The psalmist says the same: “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep” (Psalm 127:2). Sleep is a gift that God gives to those He loves. The one who cannot sleep because he must keep proving himself is refusing a gift his Father wants to give him.
Worth settled before the work began
Where can the believer find a foundation that achievement cannot shake? Look at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry:
And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan. And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him: And there came a voice from heaven, saying , Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
At this point in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has not preached a sermon, healed a single sick person or called one disciple. He has spent about thirty years in Nazareth, most of them, as far as we know, working with His hands. The people of His town knew Him as “the carpenter” (Mark 6:3). And it is over that carpenter, before any public ministry at all, that the Father says, “Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
The Father’s pleasure was not the reward for the ministry. It was the ground from which the ministry began. And everything Jesus went on to do, He did as the beloved Son. He worked with astonishing excellence: the crowds said, “He hath done all things well” (Mark 7:37). But He also withdrew to pray, slept in a boat during a storm, rested at a well at midday and did not heal every sick person in every town. He lived within the limits of a real human life, and He was not diminished by them.
The gospel places the believer in that same position. Through faith in Christ, the Father’s acceptance rests on you before you do anything. You are His workmanship, “created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ephesians 2:10). The good works come after the creating. You are not building a self through your work. God has already made you, and now you get to work as one who is made.
This is what makes real excellence possible. A worker who is not afraid of failure can accept correction. He can admit he does not know how to do something and ask to be taught. He can let someone else take credit. He can say no to an order he cannot do well. He can rest without guilt. Settled worth does not make him lazy. It frees him from the fear that so often makes people either give up or burn out.
Excellence within human limits
So what does excellence look like for someone who knows they are already accepted? A few marks stand out.
It takes on what it can do well. Chinyere’s problem was not that she cared too much about seams. It was that she accepted thirty-one orders that a workshop of two people could not finish without destroying her health. Saying no, or saying “January,” was not a failure of excellence. It would have been part of it. Promising what you cannot deliver is its own kind of mediocrity.
It learns and teaches. The mahir worker became skilled through practice. That means training courses, honest feedback, watching people who are better than you and admitting what you do not yet know. It also means passing skill on, as Bezaleel and Aholiab were called to teach others (Exodus 35:34). An excellent worker who never trains anyone has built something that will die with him.
It cares about the person on the receiving end. Excellence is ultimately a form of love. The nurse who checks the dosage twice, the mechanic who tightens the bolt properly, the teacher who marks the essay carefully, the civil servant who processes the file without being “encouraged” with money: each one is serving a real person who will live with the result.
It refuses the dishonest shortcut. A great deal of what passes for efficiency is really a hidden cost passed on to someone else: the cheap thread that will give way after the second wash, the substandard part fitted in place of the right one, the figures rounded in your favour. Excellence and integrity are the same virtue seen from two sides. Work cannot be called excellent if it only looks good until the customer has paid.
It respects the body. Rest, sleep, meals, medical check-ups and time with family are not interruptions to faithful work. They are part of the stewardship of the person God has entrusted with that work. Where exhaustion, anxiety or a sense of never being good enough has become overwhelming, wise counsel and appropriate medical or professional help are a form of faithfulness, not a lack of it.
And it rests from the verdict. When the day’s work is finished, the excellent believer hands it over. “Establish thou the work of our hands upon us” (Psalm 90:17) is a prayer, not a boast. The work belongs to God, and so does the worker.
Chinyere did not finish the bride’s dress. From the hospital bed, the next morning, she did something she had never done in her working life. She phoned the bride and told her the truth. She said she was sorry, that she had taken on too much, that the dress was three-quarters done, and that she would refund the full amount if the bride preferred. The bride’s mother took the phone and said, “Ah, my daughter, rest. My sister will finish it.” The apprentice delivered the rest of the aso-ebi on time with the help of a tailor two doors down, and Chinyere refunded part of the price for the dress anyway.
When she went back to the workshop in January, she took down the sign. In its place she put up a printed card with Colossians 3:23: “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.” She told me she wanted to remember the second half of the verse as much as the first.
Her work has not become careless. Her inside seams are still finished as neatly as the outside, and customers still say she is the tailor who does not lie. But she now caps the number of orders she accepts in December. She prices her work properly instead of undercharging to win approval. She has started teaching her apprentice the difficult cuts that she used to keep for herself. And she sleeps.
“For years I sewed as if my father was standing behind me,” she said. “Now I sew as if my Father is standing behind me. The seams are the same. The fear is gone.”
PunchlineReject mediocrity. Do whatever your hand finds to do with all your might. But do it as a beloved child, from a worth that was settled before you threaded your first needle.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Which failure do you lean towards more naturally: the careless minimum, or the drive that cannot rest?
- What would change in your work this month if you truly did it “as to the Lord, and not unto men”?
- Is there a skill God has given you that you have neglected to develop or to pass on to someone else?
- Have you taken on more than you can do well? What would honest limits look like for you?
- How does the Father’s word over Jesus, spoken before His public ministry, speak to the way you measure your own worth?
This Week
Choose one ordinary task in your work this week and do it with unusual care, including the parts that nobody will see, as an offering to Christ. Then, at the end of each working day, write down what you did, hand it to God in a short prayer, and stop. If you know you are carrying more commitments than you can do well, identify one you can honestly decline, delay or share, and take that step before the week ends.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that You accepted me in Christ before I did any work for You. Forgive me where I have been careless with what You have entrusted to me, and forgive me too where I have tried to make my work prove that I am worth something. Fill my hands with skill and my heart with care for the people who receive my work. Teach me to do whatever my hand finds to do with all my might, and then to rest in You and receive the sleep You give to Your beloved. Establish the work of my hands, Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.