Labor Day and the #2 Pencil

Happy Labor Day!

It’s a day worth honoring ALL work, from the people who have an idea, develop a product and build the factory, to the people who work in the factory, to the people who provide the raw materials that the factory uses, to the people who transport the materials to the factory, and all the people who deliver the finished product to stores and homes. It takes them ALL. Thank you!

Consider the lowly #2 pencil:

Somebody had to cut down the tree (that’s real wood in there!). Someone mined the graphite. Yellow paint comes from a certain combination of minerals that someone mined and others put together. There’s a little piece of metal and an eraser. Someone had to build the machine that put all those pieces together under the watchful eye of the folks in the pencil factory.

And here’s the miracle: all that raw material and workmanship, and you can buy a box of 320 them, pre-sharpened, for…wait for it…$29.99. Is that not amazing? Less than 10 cents per pencil. It boggles the mind.

Thank you, workers! ALL of you. You are continuing God’s work in the world.

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1.31, ESV)

3 thoughts on “Labor Day and the #2 Pencil”

  1. And don’t forget us shoppers who get dressed, drive to the store, and push a cart all over supplying our households with all we need!! 😂 We labor, too!! 😉

  2. Ah, the good ole #2 pencil! Yes, it’s quite remarkable to get something that involves all of that work, innovation, creativity for less than 10 cents a pencil.

    Great to see you yesterday. It was nice that Pastor Dave asked you to do the Commission.

    Happy Labor Day!

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