As a boy I worked for a Scottish shoemaker named Dan Mackay, a forthright Christian. It was my responsibility to pound leather for shoe soles. A piece of cowhide would be cut to suit, then soaked in water. I had a piece of iron over my knees and, with a flat-headed hammer, I pounded these soles until they were hard and dry. It seemed an endless operation, and I wearied of it many times.

What made my task worse was the fact that, a block away, there was another shop, and in it sat a jolly, godless cobbler who regaled the neighborhood with lewd tales that made him dreaded by respectable parents. Yet, somehow, he seemed to thrive. I noticed that he never pounded the soles at all, but took them from the water and nailed them on, with the water splashing from them as he drove each nail in. One day I ventured inside. Timidly, I said, “I notice you put the soles on while still wet. Are they just as good as if they were pounded?” He gave me a wicked leer as he answered, “They come back all the quicker this way, my boy!”

Feeling I had learned something, I related the instance to my boss. Mr. Mackay stopped his work and opened his Bible to the passage that reads, “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” “Harry,” he said, “I do not cobble shoes just for the money I get from my customers. I am doing this for the glory of God. I expect to see every shoe I have ever repaired in a big pile at the judgment seat of Christ, and I do not want the Lord to say to me in that day, ‘Dan, this was a poor job.’ I want Him to be able to say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’” He went on to explain that just as some men are called to preach, so he was called to fix shoes, and only as he did this well would his testimony count for God (cf. Col. 3:23–25).