I don’t remember exactly how old I was—maybe 11 or 12—when I was out in the garage, working on my bicycle. At some point, my dad walked by, watched for a moment or two, and then said, “Go grab the right wrench. Rome wasn’t built with an adjustable wrench!” Apparently, that was his version of “the right tool for the right job.”
Like a lot of us who are into DIY, my dad’s garage was filled with “right” tools. There were full sets of wrenches available to me: metric, standard, boxed, open-ended, ratchets, allens, torx, and more. There were so many screwdrivers in one drawer that he made sure all the phillips faced one way, and all the bladed faced the other. The pliers drawers had standard, needle-nose, vice grips, pipe wrenches, clamp adjusters, and even a faucet wrench. On one shelf there was a coffee can filled with nuts and bolts that more often than not, contained what was needed to get the job done. And, of course, there were those tools that fit that one bolt on that one car that we hadn’t owned for a decade–I have one of those in my toolbox right now.
Even at my young age, I knew there was a “right” tool for the bolt I was working on, and without a doubt, it wasn’t too far away. But in my youthful reasoning, I found convenience in having one wrench that could grab all the bolts.
But my dad was right. There was a better tool not too far away that would do the job much better and easier.
Am I a tool?
Over the years, I’ve learned this advice, like many of my dad’s aphorisms, had broader application than I noticed as a young bicycle mechanic. There are many of us–or maybe it’s just me–who try to be the adjustable wrench, the seat-filler, the reliable person who tries to do all things, or at least more than we should.
A few years later, I was in college. During one of the more evangelical phases of my faith journey, my friend Hoss and I had a conversation about how different we were in so many areas of life, yet so similar in our desire to be in ministry. I was a suburban kid from NJ; he from the Appalachian hills of West Virginia. He was a pitcher on our baseball team; I am a baseball fan. He had a slow, southern drawl; I speak with east coast speed.
Soon, we began to realize this is a feature, not a bug. The difference are part of the plan, the way we are designed.
As we marveled at the ministries we dreamed to be part of, the metaphor we settled upon was—you guessed it—a toolbox. We were tools in God’s toolbox. We started saying thing like, “you could use a hammer to drive a screw, or a screwdriver to drive a nail, but thankfully we weren’t all the same and God can use us differently.” Ah, the depth of a late-night conversation between college students.
Not sure I would still put it that way, but there is something to be said for knowing your unique set of interests and aptitudes and using them to serve others in the right ways.
I know I have spent far too many seasons of life trying to be an adjustable wrench–molding myself to whatever needed doing, even if that isn’t what I’ve been built for. I’ve frustrated myself trying to overcome weaknesses rather than hone strengths, to be all things to all people, to meet the need–whatever, wherever, whenever that might be. Far too often I have seen myself as the only tool, rather than just one uniquely gifted tool among many.
A community of tools
One of the things I like most about this toolbox illustration, is that it emphasizes community.
At the risk of mixing metaphors, there’s a line in Bull Durham that makes a similar point. In one of the many memorable conversations between pitcher and catcher on the mound, Crash (Kevin Costner) says to Nuke (Tim Robbins),
“Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls – it’s more democratic.”
Nuke was trying to strike everybody out, to do it all himself, as if the rest of the team wasn’t on the field. He was trying to be the adjustable wrench, taking care of every bolt by himself. But there was a whole team behind him, ready to use their gifts to do the job they were designed to do.
I need to hear that today. Relax, all right? Do what you do, and stop trying to do more than you were designed to do.
Because Rome wasn’t built with an adjustable wrench.
It took the right tools, working together, each doing what they were made to do. Same goes for us.