Meaning of the Cross — Elisabeth Elliot

The Cross as a Personal Call to Surrender

Meaning of the cross. We can never get beyond the need to remind ourselves of what the cross means. I believe that God wants the cross to cut deeply like a sword into the life of every one of us. So when I speak of the meaning of the cross, I'm speaking of the deep personal meaning of that tremendous symbol of our faith.

When I was a little child, I began to love the hymns about the cross. I'm sure that many times when people ask me, what is your favorite hymn, I've said, to me, the cross of Jesus. It was when I was about 14 years old that I realized that I was lying when I sang that hymn.

Because as it stands here, it says, I take, O cross, thy shadow for my abiding place. I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of his face. And I thought, I know a whole lot of kinds of sunshine that I would like, that I would ask for, besides just the sunshine of the face of Jesus.

But I've learned that in these very exalted expressions of spiritual desire, that we can't always be honest in saying them, but we can make them a prayer. And so I sing these hymns not lying, but just saying, Lord, help me to be able to say this in honesty, make this real in my life.

But it was many more years before I thought deeply about the meaning of those words. And the whole hymn is an attempt to show that the cross, which is a symbol of suffering, and it means torture, doesn't it?

The cross on which Jesus was nailed was the instrument of execution back in Jesus' time. And I'm sure many of you today are wearing a little gold cross around your neck. Well, can you imagine wearing a little gold electric chair around your neck?

We would think that was the most horrible thought. And yet, the cross was the instrument of torture and death in Jesus' time. But he has transformed that instrument for all of us, for all of time, so that we can actually sing in the cross of Christ our glory, towering over the rest of time.

That's another one of the great hymns about the cross. Back to beneath the cross of Jesus, what Elizabeth Clefane, the author of that hymn, was pointing out to us is that it was the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land, a home within the wilderness, a rest upon the way.

Did you ever think of the cross as a shadow from the heat, a home in the wilderness, a rest on the way? And then he just stands there and says, upon that cross of Jesus my eye at times can see the very dying form of one who suffered there for me.

And from my smitten heart appears two wonders, I confess, the wonders of his glorious love and my own worthlessness. Modern hymn books have mostly changed that last word to my unworthiness, but it is more powerful than that in the original version, my own worthlessness.

And then there's a stanza about a chastening place. I have to stop and think now. It's about the unhealing place between God and us, and actually a comfort and a rest. The whole stanza is about a rest and a place, a chastening place, between God and man.

In other words, a meeting place. That's an old English word and that means very much to me. We come to the cross as Christians did in Pilgrim's Progress, and if you haven't heard John Brennan's Pilgrim's Progress, I strongly recommend it to you.

Read it yourself with your children. Read it and reread it, because it is a description of the whole Christian life. And when the pilgrim, the Christian, reached the cross, he had been carrying a tremendously heavy burden of sin.

And when he got to the cross, the story tells us that this burden just fell out his back and rolled down the hill of Calvary and into the tomb. And he looked up at the cross and he said, he has given me rest by his sorrows and life by his death.

God gives us rest through the cross. There are two great principles that the understanding of the cross comprises, and this first talk will be about the first one, which is relinquishment. The second is acceptance.

Denying Self and Taking Up the Cross

Relinquishment and acceptance. And do you remember what the three conditions for discipleship are? And Jesus said, if you want to be my disciple, you must do two things, three things. Number one, deny yourself.

That sounds very dangerous in this day and age, doesn't it? We get all twitchy and that's denial. And if you're in denial, then of course you really need some professional help. Well, let's take the word of Jesus.

We need denial. And what he means by that is giving up our right to ourselves. That's another translation. If you want to be my disciple, you must give up your right to yourself. Is that easy? I think it's the hardest thing for any of us to do for all of our lives.

It doesn't matter how long we may have walked with the Lord. There isn't a day that goes by that God isn't going to give us the opportunity to give up our right to ourselves. And that's death. The time is short of it.

It's death. We have to die to ourselves. Not just once, but again and again and again. The second condition is take up the cross. That means excellence and following. And that means obedience. We've been seeing songs about worship, and I hear that word a great deal more nowadays in churches than I ever heard it in a church in which I grew up.

The word wasn't used. We did it, of course, but we didn't talk about worship or sing about, I really want to worship you, Lord, and things like that. And there was a rather staggering claim made in one of those songs that we heard this morning that I will stand and worship you all night long and all day too.

And I think of how relatively easy it is to sing about worshipping, write about worshipping, talk about worshipping, and even pray about worshipping by comparison with the highest form of worship. Do you know what the highest form of worship is?

It's not singing and talking and praying and writing. It's obedience. Obedience is the highest form of worship. Sometimes I think that when we make breathtaking claims in our songs, if we were attuned to the voice of the Holy Spirit, he might be saying to us, don't tell me, show me.

Showing the Life of Jesus Through Obedience

When Amy Carmichael was a rude missionary in India, she had been itinerating and giving out the gospel by interpretation, and her man came up to her after one of her talks and he said, we have heard your words.

Now can you show us the life of your Lord Jesus? And years later when she was a missionary in India, she was in India for 53 years without a furlough, almost exactly the same thing happened again. She had been speaking many times in that village, and the old man came up to her and he said, we have heard the preaching.

Can you now show us the life of your Lord Jesus? And that's what the world is looking for, ladies. But every woman in this room came to the foot of the cross and gave up her right to herself, it could change the state of California.

There's no telling the ripple effects of that kind of commitment. God is calling us to relinquishment, and that means saying no to ourselves. Relinquishment is no to myself, I give up my right to myself, and I say not my will, but thine be done.

There are many kinds of relinquishment out there. Jesus relinquished everything that he had endured in heaven and came to earth as a helpless lady. The Lord of the universe relinquished all that power, all that omnipotence, all that omniscience, all that omnipresence, because omnipresence, of course, means to be everywhere at the same time, and God is omnipresent, but Jesus became a little baby, helpless, swollen baby.

He could not have survived without his mother. He gave up all of that glory. Another one of my favorite hymns when I was a little girl was Out of the Ivory Palaces, a hymn about his relinquishment. Out of the ivory palaces into a world of woe, only his great eternal love made my soul rebel.

So we follow our Lord Jesus when we relinquish our right to ourselves. The Apostle Paul was able to say, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. The life which I now live in flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Have you been crucified with Christ? It hurts. What else do we expect? So often we hear people talk about, well, I don't know why so-and-so has to suffer the way she does. She's such a good person. I don't know why the Lord let this happen to him.

He's such a marvelous man. I don't know why the Lord lets famines and floods and earthquakes and fires happen and little children be aborted. And of course we must bow in the acknowledgement that we are up against mystery.

But it's not total mystery when it comes to human suffering, especially the suffering of Christians. In my book called A Path Through Suffering, I have an appendix which gives at least 28 different reasons that the Bible has given us by way of explanation as to why we must suffer.

Well, part of it is in order that we might know Christ. The Apostle Paul said he only wanted one thing in the world. He said, one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, reaching forth to those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings. And there couldn't have been a resurrection without the crucifixion. You and I cannot rise into new life with Jesus Christ without giving up our right to ourselves.

Giving Up the Right to Oneself

Now let's be very clear about this, that we have an option. We don't have to give up our right to ourselves unless we want to be a follower of Jesus. I remember hearing Henry Grant, the psychologist, tell about owning four ice cream parlors back in the 60s, I guess it was, when everything had fallen apart and there were no manors left.

And he decided that in those ice cream parlors he would have good-looking, clean-cut, nicely-dressed, polite young people. And again and again customers would say to him, come to them and say, where in the world do you get all these nice-looking, nicely-dressed, clean-cut young people that are so courteous?

Where do you find them? And he said, we don't find them, we make them. And he said one of the first things he did when a young boy would come in looking for a job, he would show them a picture of a boy with a nice haircut.

And he'd say, now this is the way you're going to wear your hair. No explanation verbally, but just, look, you just look at this picture, this is the way you're going to have your hair. And the boy would say, you're going to tell me how I can wear my hair.

And he said, no, not unless you want to work here. These are the conditions. And the girls had to wear stockings and decent-looking shoes. And he said invariably a girl would come to work the first day and she didn't have any stockings on, she didn't have the right shoes, and he'd say, well, you go home and get the right ones.

She'd say, go home? I need all the way across town to get an hour and a half to get here. He'd say, well, make sure you don't make the same mistake again. We'll see you around. It's an option. If you want the apology of Christ, then you give up the rights yourself.

And that means, I am not my own anymore. That's what it says in 1 Corinthians 6 .10. You are not your own. You are God with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body. And it is in this physical body.

Mine happens to be tall and urgent and Anglo-Saxon and female, and that's the only body in which I am here in this world to glorify God. But I am not my own. I am his property. And that explains a whole lot of things.

When we ask why, let's remember, I turned over the rights to Jesus Christ. I told him I wanted his will and not mine. Jesus was helpless as a baby. He was followed by multitudes, but not because of the words he spoke.

He was followed because of the loaves and fishes that he gave out to the miracles that people wanted to see. And he was challenged and argued with and hated and ultimately captured, blindfolded, flogged, slapped, crowned with coins, and nailed to a cross.

Christ's Suffering and the Necessity of the Cross

Relinquishment. Humiliation. Do we understand the cross in our everyday lives? In Luke 18 .31, Jesus is telling the disciples exactly what is going to happen. He says, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled.

He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will knock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him, and kill him. On the third day, he will rise again. Now, this is not the first time that Jesus has explained this to his disciples.

The verse 34 says the disciples did not understand any of this. It's meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about. Isn't it amazing that the 12 disciples whom Jesus had personally chosen to follow him, to walk with him, to watch the miracles, to hear him pray, to eat with him, and to go off into the mountains and the woods with him, those who most intimately observed his life, they didn't know what he was talking about.

They did not know what he was talking about. And in Matthew 16 .21, we have a similar passage. Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed.

Would you ever stop to think about the necessity that we find here, the will of God who created the world, who can do anything he wants to, and Jesus was put under necessity at the hands of men, at their whims, at the mercy of their hatred.

He must go to Jerusalem, must suffer, must be killed, and on the third day be raised to life. And Peter said to him just what you and I would have said if we'd been there, we'd put him aside and began to rebuke him.

Never, Lord, he said, this shall never happen to you. Another translation says God forbid that such a thing should ever happen to you. And Jesus' reaction is rather startling, isn't it? He turns to him, to Peter, whom he has just called a rock a few verses ahead of this.

He says, I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. And the gates of hell are not overcoming, I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Tremendous responsibility that he's offering to Peter.

But when Peter says, never, Lord, this shall never happen to you, Jesus turns and says to Peter, get behind me safe. You are a stumbling block to me. You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.

And what was at the heart of Peter's objection? Encouragement to self-pity. He wanted Jesus to protect himself, to feel sorry for himself, to escape the sufferings with a pointer. And so Peter is siding with Satan.

Satan loves self-pity. If he can just get us in a swamp and a quagmire feeling so sorry for poor little me, what have I done to deserve this? He is tickled to death. He just loves it. Because self-pity is satanic.

It is satanic. And if there's one thing that we women are likely to be subject to, and that we have to fight with everything we've got, tooth and nail, in order to deny ourselves the sad, sweet, stinking sympathy of self-pity.

And I have to confess that that phrase comes from my old Bible teacher, Richard Maxwell, at the Prayer Bible Institute in Canada. And I remember after there had been a long, supposedly prayer session, the kids got up and they confessed all sorts of ridiculous, trivial little things that they were very sorry about and didn't really want to hear about.

And when the prayer meeting was all over, he just got up and he said, Oh Lord, deliver us from our sad, sweet, stinking selves. Remember, when you feel sorry for yourself, you're siding with Satan. Then Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself.

Take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for me will find it. And you know, Jesus said that. Jim Elliot said, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

I couldn't tell you how many people have told me that's the most wonderful truth. How did Jim Elliot ever come up with that? Well, he read the original in the concept. Whoever wants to save his life will lose it.

But whoever loses his life for me will find it. Relinquishment is the willingness to lose your life, to lose your reputation, to lose control over your children. I couldn't tell you how many letters I get from my radio listeners with sad stories about difficulties with in-laws, because the parents never let go and back off and shut up.

Now, I am very grateful that God has given me the privilege of being a mother-in-law, and I have a most unusual son-in-law who actually asks for advice sometimes. And I try not to dish it out until he does ask.

But that's one of the big relinquishments, isn't it? And when your first child goes off to the first grade or to nursery school or wherever you may send him out of your home, that's a relinquishment, isn't it?

I'll never forget this a few days before my daughter Valerie was going to college. I thought this was really the first big separation, because she'd never been away from home. She did go to public school for part of her education, but I realized she's going to college, this is it as far as her ever being around home very much anymore.

She may be here a little bit in summertime, and as it worked out, she did get married as soon as she graduated from college. But it was a tremendously painful thing to realize she's grown up, my job is practically over, and I have to relinquish her to God.

Suffering, Obedience, and Christian Maturity

Do we understand the cross? The disciples wouldn't. We don't. Let's understand here that suffering is a necessity. It says in Hebrews that Jesus learned obedience by the things that he suffered. There's a mystery.

The spotless Son of God had to learn obedience, not by the things he enjoyed, but by the things that he suffered. So if we're ever, ever tempted to say, why do I have to suffer? Let's forget that question and ask the question, who do I think I am?

That I should be exempt. My Lord Jesus learned obedience through the things which he suffered, and it says in Hebrews 2 .10, he is the captain of our salvation, who was made perfect through what? Suffering.

Perfect through suffering. The necessity of suffering if we are going to be followers. That is what the cross is about. Give up your right to yourself. Now this means a radically different mindset. And I brought along a letter, which is one of the most amazing and unusual letters that I've gotten, and I get hundreds of very amazing letters.

But I can't resist reading you this letter by way of illustration of this radically different mindset, a total turnaround in a woman's life. The story is, she says, that my marriage of 33 years was ending.

There was no communication and preparation to finish that painful marriage that not only ruined my life, but also ruined my two boys of 30 and 27. The past was scary and painful, the future did not seem better, so I started to cry to God, please heal my marriage.

I pleaded to God for about a month. God told me, through you, go and treat your husband as you would treat Jesus. Call him Lord and serve him. Now I want to assure you that that is not an Elizabeth Elliot idea.

I've got that out of the Bible too. Because it's too preposterous, isn't it? Can you imagine telling somebody who's had a terrible marriage for 33 years, well start treating him as you would treat Jesus and call him Lord?

Where did I get that? Well, it says in 1 Peter 3, in speaking of how women who are married to non-Christian husbands are supposed to treat them, take Sarah as your example. She called him Lord. She called Abraham Lord and did not give way to hysterical fears.

The letter goes on. I did not have anything to lose, so I decided to try. I went home. He was still sitting in his chair like a mummy, not even blinking, watching the TV. I hate that scene. But I controlled myself and very respectfully asked if I could talk to him for a moment.

He immediately, to my surprise, switched the TV off and listened. What do you say next to Jesus? You ask forgiveness, right? So I did. I told him how understanding I was, how un-understanding I was, how stupid I was, and how wrong I was my whole life, and asked him for his forgiveness, even though he had decided not to continue our marriage.

Another surprise. He said that he loved me and always loved me and wanted to leave because he thought he was a burden to me and our family. Since he is not working, smoking and drunk previously, he doesn't drink anymore, he feels inadequate in himself and it has nothing to do with me.

Then I told him how important it is, him being with us and in the house for me, also for the boys. And thus I understood how our communication was distorted because of our own distorted feelings about each other.

We are still the same people, but our home is based on God's teaching and whenever I am angry with him and want to put him down, I remember how would I treat him if he was Jesus. My whole approach changes.

My words are so different. I sound with love and respect. Do you know what? With more than one month, it has never happened before in 33 years, we have not had a fight. I do not have cramps in my stomach when he opens his mouth to speak.

I dearly love him, accept him as he is, and gladly do what he asks me to do. I listen and respect his ideas, even though they are 180 degrees different from mine, and I also have the courage to speak my ideas, but try to say them in a way that will not offend him.

Hard work is worth it. Elizabeth, there is such a peace in my house. I never, never had. The house was built by Jesus and it must stand forever. I thank God. P .S. I try not to hurt my husband, but I am not always successful, so I tell him I am sorry the same day.

Just as the Bible teaches, I also talk about my hurts with him and solve them the same day. Oh, how it works well. My only regret is that I did not know it sooner. God has promised to restore my past and my trusty will.

I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. Now, I managed to track this lady down, and I called her on the phone, and I said, may I read your letters? May I make it public? And she said, of course.

Well, it had been four months, and I said, how is it going now? Better every day, she said. I live with Jesus. What did she relinquish? Her right to be right. Is there any of us that doesn't want to be right?

I've had people say to me more than once, you always have to be right, don't you? And I want to say, have you ever met anybody that wants to be wrong? I never have, but I'm sure I come across as though I think I am right all the time, and I know that that's very far from the truth.

But this woman gave up her right to herself. She gave up her right to apologies from her husband. And how many times do we stand on our rights and say, well, it's his fault, he did it, and I'm going to wait until he apologizes to me, because he knows he was wrong.

And you can lie in bed with the tears running into your ears, and he's not going to budge. He's going to snore. He'll be snoring before you ever see him. This lady lost her life and found it. We are so afraid that we're going to lose our rights, that we're going to lose respect, we're going to lose ground, if we do the right thing.

Whoever loses his life will find it. And she found a totally new life, and a totally new husband, all by that one simple principle. And it comes from Matthew 25 40. Jesus said, inasmuch as you have done it for one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it for me.

Your husband is one of his brothers. Do it for Jesus. Now Jesus, of course, happened to be talking about little tiny children at that time. It doesn't make any difference who it is. How we treat anybody is how we are treating Jesus.

Inasmuch as you did not do it for the least of these my brothers, you did not do it for me. Someone has said, marriage is the furniture of your life. Now that's not something that people remind the bride of when she's coming down the aisle.

She's coming down the aisle with one object in mind, that beloved face down there. She doesn't care about anything else. Where he is, and she's about to give herself to him totally in the presence of God and witnesses forever.

In sickness or in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse. She's not worried about sickness, and she's not worried about poorer, and she's not worried about worse. That bit will come.

What she thinks is a prize package is going to be a surprise package. But if in all of that premarital counseling we could just simply sit these two people down and say to them, you each are forfeiting your life.

You are giving up your life to this person and for this person. Because love means two things, the intention of unity, and I'm going to have to bow to myself if I intend to maintain and foster unity between myself and my husband Lars, who is standing at the back door there giving me counseling.

And the other thing is the intention of the good of the beloved. Concern for the good of the beloved. Intention of unity, concern for the good of the beloved. The lady whose letter I read just knew that nothing was going to work and they were going to be divorced.

And she thought, well, what do I have to read? And I will try what Elizabeth said, which Elizabeth got straight out of Matthew 25 40. Amy Carmichael says in her little gem of a book called If, and I recommend you Amy Carmichael's books.

If you start reading her you can forget about reading Elizabeth Elliot because I feel with everything I know I learned from Amy Carmichael now it's a slight exaggeration, but she wrote a book which is a masterpiece, a very thin book with one sentence on each page.

And one of them says, if I refuse to take the second place or the 20th without making a fuss, then I know nothing. Calvary, love, relinquishment. We relinquish control over our children. And any of us who have been seeking to control our husbands, it's time to let go of that.

Because God did not appoint us as their moral custodians. We are not in charge of our husbands' morality. We can pray for them, and we have another weapon besides prayer, which is a gentle and quiet spirit.

But I get many, many letters from women telling me all these terrible things that their husbands are doing, or all the wonderful things they should be doing that they're not doing, confessing their husbands' sins to me and telling me, don't you think I'm right?

And it may very well be sin, of course, but since when did God appoint us over our husbands? It's not in the book. This book says the husband is the head of the wife. So forget the control of your husband, forget the control of your children once they have grown up.

I have to try not to try to control my grandchildren. There are all kinds of things I want for my grandchildren. I want to teach them things, I want to show them things, and I do that. My daughter wants me to, my son-in-law wants me to, but I have to be careful.

My oldest grandson has a haircut that is not my idea. He did not consult me on that, and I haven't told him how he really ought to wear it. I just gave him one little hint that I said, you know, I think you're so handsome, I can't see as much of your face as I'd like to.

And he takes it with a good spirit and just laughs it off, oh well, that's Granny talking. Relinquish a desire for things that God is not giving you. Marriage, for example, what about that? Will you just offer it to Jesus Christ?

Open your hands and let it go. And say, Lord, I want what you want to give me. You know what's best for me. I relinquish this heated, totally preoccupying, insistent desire that controls my life. I meet many young women who have, as it were, put their lives on hold, waiting for a man.

The Bible says wait on the Lord. God knows if marriage is a good thing for you, and God knows if it's not. But you may be asking for stone when you think it's bread. Relinquishment of work done for God.

Some of you know the story of how in my very first year as a missionary, I reduced a certain tribal language to writing. It was a hard job. It took me a better part of nine months just to reduce it to writing.

That's a long way from translating the Bible, but that's the first step. But nine months' worth was in one suitcase and it was stolen. There were no Xeroxes in those days and no tape recorders. We prayed that God would get the suitcase back.

I never got it back. I did that work for God. Am I willing to relinquish my rights over what I do for God if it seems common to nothing, if nobody ever appreciates it, if nobody ever says thank you, if nobody ever gets to benefit by it?

God never wastes a servant's time. Relinquishment of my rights. There are some people here this morning who are full of bitterness. I don't know who you are, but somebody did something unforgivable. You are not going to forgive that person, at least until she apologizes.

The chances are she's not going to. Jesus taught us to pray, to give us our trespasses as we forgive those who apologize. The cross cuts deeply. But to come to the cross of Jesus, we must open our hands.

Let go. Let God take over your life. Give him yourself. Give him your rights. Die. Just go ahead and die. And again, to quote my Bible teacher, Mr. Maxwell, a lady came up to him one time and she said, oh, Mr. Maxwell, I'm so scared that maybe the Lord might call me to be a missionary, a foreign missionary.

I don't want to be a foreign missionary. She said, I think I would just die if he did that. And Mr. Maxwell put his hand on the lady's shoulder and he said, do both, sister. You'll never be any good as a missionary or as a servant of the Lord until you die.

Give up your right to an apology. Die to yourself. Let it go. He that loses his life, for my sake, shall find God bless him. Now the two things that Jesus demonstrated so unequivocally for us are relinquishment and acceptance when he went to the cross.

Acceptance of God's Will

He gave up all rights when he came into this world as a helpless lady. And he relinquished all for the Father. And he prayed in Gethsemane, not my will, but thine be done. And that should be the note of our lives.

Similar to that of Mary, when Mary received that visitor telling her that she was to be the mother of the Son of God. Mary's response was an instant one of total relinquishment of her own plans. How could she possibly imagine trying to explain to Joseph that she had not been unfaithful to him?

And as you recall in the story, Joseph did believe that she had been unfaithful because the Bible says that he, being a righteous man, was going to put her away privately because, of course, in Jewish law, he could not marry a fornicator.

How would she explain to the people in the town? How would she explain to her parents her pregnancy? But we find not a word of self-defense on Mary's part. God took care of explaining to Joseph. He sent an angel to make that clear.

But Mary relinquished her plans. You can imagine, you can only try to imagine the shock of having that kind of a visitor and that kind of an announcement. But she opened her hands, and that should be our attitude through all of life toward Christ, open hands, letting go of what God wants to take and receiving what God wants to give.

And we cannot receive what he wants to give until we have let go of what he wants to take. So relinquishment and acceptance are the great principles of the cross. Now look at the demands of the Incarnation.

He put himself in a position where he was hungry, he was weary, he was thirsty. He never owned a home. He was an itinerant rabbi in the only three years that we know very much about. We can only assume that he must have worked hard in the carpenter shop with his foster father Joseph.