“Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” Did your Grandma ever tell you that? It’s long been my mantra and whenever I forget it, I get in trouble.

When I saw the Case Knife advertisement pictured here, I wasn’t thinking deeply or philosophically. The slogan simply reminded me of something I’ve heard all my life and it was a neat picture I wanted to share with all of you. Yet, as I thought about composing thoughts to go along with the image, I’m afraid I began to wax philosophical.

This is the sort of maxim that we might try to assign biblical roots. However, it does not appear in the Bible, yet the same moral is oft repeated in scripture. Proverbs 19:15 warns of hunger coming from slothfulness and 1 Timothy 5:13 cautions Pastor Timothy of the trouble young widows will find if left without a husband, children or a home to care for.

The Apostle Paul really gets after laziness in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3. He says those that don’t work shouldn’t eat (verse 10) and you shouldn’t hang out with them (verse 6). Paul gives himself as the example, saying that he worked hard and paid for everything he took from the Thessalonian congregation.

Christian women treasure Proverbs chapter 31, but King Lemuel’s mother didn’t abide idleness anymore than Paul would a few centuries later. Of 31 verses, 11 talk about work. She even says this virtuous woman, “does not eat of the bread of idleness”. This woman, works willingly with her hands, brings food into the home, plants, makes her arms strong, works late into the night, spins, sews and feeds the poor. Whew, she puts me to shame!

So, Tennessee Mountain Stories is a history blog – it’s the stories of the mountains. How, you may ask, does a dissertation on idle hands fit here? Well, I’m so glad you asked.

Despite a stereotype of mountain people (perhaps specifically mountain men) who are slow to work and waste their days fishing or hunting, I’ll argue that the people of the mountains have always been hard-working and industrious. While they didn’t build lasting monuments to themselves in the form of fine homes or luxurious plantations, they poured themselves into their families and communities. The testimony to this work lies in our rich heritage and deep roots. I hold all of this history I share with you because my family told the stories and taught the principles across generations.

I recently read a book (Will they Stand, Ham, Master Books, 2021) that contends our history and culture can be lost in a single generation. He remembers an Australian Aboriginal elder quoting his father’s answer to a question about God’s nature, “I don’t know son. We’ve forgotten.” Well, the Appalachian people remember – we remember stories (and ballads) from the old country; we remember principles and life lessons from The Bible (even when we don’t properly attribute them to God’s word). We remember our heritage because the generations before us worked to instill it deep within us. And we remember a lot of the old ways – ways of hard work like raising a garden on thin rocky soil or finding nourishment from the forests and medicine from the land.

Yet there is much I have either forgotten or failed to learn. And I’m convicted of my idleness even as I type these words. My people could build a house from indigenous materials in a matter of days, I cannot. My people could diagnose a child’s ailment and find a cure on the hillside, I cannot. My people looked at the sunrise and planned a day of work based on what God lay before them at that moment – as I watch the eastern sky grow brighter with this morning’s rising sun, that is just what I’m going to do.