Do You See a Man Skillful in His Work?

"Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings, he will not stand before obscure men."  - Proverbs 22:29

This Proverb is one of my favorite Proverbs. The skill I have worked on is the skill of public speaking.

My interest in public speaking came from observing my parents practice talks for Pre-Cana, a program that prepared couples for marriage. I also observed my father prepare for pro-life talks at Church. While my dad never loved his work, he clearly came alive when he was practicing those talks.

When I was in eighth grade, I participated in the Optimist Club speech contest. I do not remember how I learned about the contest, but I remember the topic was “Destiny: choice, not chance.”

I remember practicing what seemed hours and hours on the speech. Six people participated in the contest and three people were selected to go on to the next round of the tournament. I wasn’t one of them. My parents told me that I had done an excellent job, but I think that failure kept me from public speaking for a long time – in fact until I got to Nativity.

At Nativity, I didn’t value speaking in my first few years. I tried to work behind the scenes organizing events even though I am poor at both organization and events. My interest in speaking was reignited by preachers like Rick Warren and Andy Stanley. I loved listening to them and found myself studying what made them so good. I began to speak to the Middle and High School students and Father White invited me to speak at Church.

In the beginning, I wasn’t very good. So many people come up to me now and remark how much I have grown as a speaker. It has taken hours and hours of practice to improve and become skillful in speaking. It has required painful hours of watching myself. I still need to keep working to improve myself, but it is now a skill I possess.

And now I stand before kings – not literal kings, but I have the opportunity to speak to people in our community who are incredibly accomplished. When I speak at church, I get to stand before men and women who run hospitals, own businesses, lead corporations, serve on boards of education, serve in government and hold positions of influence. It is an incredibly humbling place to be and I love it.

I have the honor to stand before kings because I worked on the skill of public speaking. Parish preachers and communicators must remember the incredible privilege we have each week of preaching. Mary Healy in her commentary on Hebrews notes, “Then, as now, the primary role of Christian leaders is to preach the word of God, since preaching gives birth to faith, the necessary foundation on which sacramental and ecclesial life is built.”

Your skill to develop may be speaking. It may be another means of communication or something else entirely. My prayer for you is that you will find a skill and a talent that you will love to develop. Find a craft that you can devote time and energy to practice and improve upon. You simply can’t become good at anything without practice. When you practice and do something over and over again, you are taking that skill into your body. You are creating muscle memory so that it becomes natural and second nature.

Working on a craft strengthens our character as well. To become skillful, you have to push past the times where you don’t feel like doing it and get to work anyway. To become skillful, you must humble yourself enough to accept criticisms or insights on how to do it better.  You must be willing to learn and accept instruction. You must be teachable. To become skillful, you must accept the fact that you have room to grow and acknowledge your own weaknesses. To become skillful requires discipline, focus and dedication.

Becoming skillful can be difficult, do it anyway. You will stand before kings and one day you will stand before the King of Kings who will say, “Well done good and faithful servant.”

Rooting for you,
Tom