A Face Too Familiar to See

“You really hurt your dad’s feelings.” My mom said it casually. But I froze. I had no idea what I did. And years later, I realized I did the same thing to Jesus.

The sawdust fell through the air like ash, the way snow falls when a breeze blows it off a rooftop. Clouds of it rose, drifted, and settled again — gathering in mounds along the cracked concrete floor. The stereo screamed over the hungry wail of table saws — blades biting wood, planers gnawing edges smooth. Everything was noise, smell, grit.

From the back of the shop, my dad emerged. He commanded the room like a conductor calling for a decrescendo, his hands pulling the air down. “Hey — hey, let’s take a break.” It was three in the afternoon. My mom had just picked us up from school and brought us here. To my shock, my dad shut down the entire shop on my behalf. I didn’t know why.

His mouth smiled, but his eyes didn’t.

Something heavy hung on him. Something invisible but suffocating.

I couldn’t stand to look at his face any longer, so I looked down at the workbench.

His hands laid there — bear paws. Thick, cracked, and calloused. Hands with stories. Hands of a working man. Hands that always held something — but now, they laid open, waiting.

I didn’t understand why he looked sad.

My mom walked in, light and bouncy, cutting through the tension. “Did you talk to him?” she asked.

Their glances lingered, and then she turned to me. “You really hurt your dad’s feelings.”

I froze. What?

I scoured my memory, blind and frantic. What had I done? What hammer did I unknowingly swing to shatter him like this?

And then they told me.

A few days earlier — just a passing comment — I had said, “I can’t remember what Daddy looks like.”

I said it lightly, like tossing a pebble into a pond. No weight, no harm intended. It was just a thought. I wasn’t wounded or crying out. I was simply observing.

Sometimes, I’d picture faces, like flipping through a photo album. Some faces came clear; others were hazy.

My dad’s face — the man who left before I woke and came home long after I’d laid down — was growing hazy.

He worked long hours and late nights. His hands were hard because his work was hard.

And my words, light as breath, became a wrecking ball in his chest.

My mom took my innocent wondering and translated it into heartbreak.

So he shut down the shop. Laid down his tools. And with his hands open on the table — like his heart — he waited for me.

I needed to apologize… but I still didn’t understand why.

How do you apologize for forgetting someone’s face?

How do you rebuild a bridge you didn’t know you burned?

And now — years later — I think about another Carpenter.

A man with hands just like my father’s — thick, strong, cracked from labor.

A man from Nazareth. Ordinary. Forgettable.

A face so familiar it became invisible.

He worked with wood, sweat dripping from His brow, and callouses deepened from labor.

And just like my father — He didn’t work to get away. He worked to draw near.

The incarnation is a scandal of proximity.

The Almighty — builder of galaxies — stepped down into splinters and sawdust.

The Creator with dirt under His fingernails.

The Redeemer with feet cracked from miles of desert walking.

He could’ve stayed distant. He could’ve worked from heaven.

But He didn’t. He came.

The Gospel of John begins like this: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

The Carpenter of Nazareth shut down heaven’s work — and walked into ours.

And instead of picking up a hammer, He picked up a cross.

Instead of shaping wood, He let it shape Him.

And with cracked hands — hard from labor — He bled out for a forgetful world.

And oh, how forgetful we are.

We see Him once — then lose Him in the noise of our days.

We grow so accustomed to the Gospel that it fades to the background.

It is so familiar with grace that it becomes invisible.

So used to His face that one day, without realizing it, we say:

“I can’t remember what He looks like.”

But the scandal of grace is this: He doesn’t leave.

He doesn’t close the shop.

He doesn’t pack up and turn away.

The Carpenter comes — again, and again, and again — pulling us near, holding us close, reminding us:

“I’m still here. I’ve always been here.”

So today — look again.

See Him

in the cracked hands of a working father, through the dust and noise of the ordinary.

In the broken bread and poured wine of communion, remember him.

Don’t let the familiarity make you forget.

Because the Carpenter of Nazareth — though you may forget His face —

has never once forgotten yours.