Unseen Hands

I see you.
I see you.

You are more than the one who serves my coffee,
who makes my food, who rings the register -
you who pick up my garbage, pave the roads,
mow the lawns, deliver the mail,
wash the piles of dishes no one thanks you for,
make the beds, fold the towels,
leave clean rooms where weary travelers find rest.

You raise walls, mend pipes, build what must be built,
tend the sick in midnight halls,
race through sirens to cradle the fallen,
stand watch in the cold to keep the peace,
teach in crowded rooms with weary grace,
listen to the broken as though each story were sacred.
Your labor is not lost upon the air.

I see the quiet sacrifice:
hands calloused, clothes worn thin
at the knees and elbows -
the weary grace of those who build
what others rest upon.

And the unseen strain behind the eyes,
the swallowed words, the tempered tone,
the weight of bosses, peers, and patrons,
the thoughts of home that never rest.
Their battles are not only of the body,
but of the mind that keeps enduring.

Baggy eyes, not-lazy but lack-of-rest yawns,
the slow breath before another long day begins.
You rise before dawn, unseen by the world you sustain;
the city hums because your hands have touched it.

These hands—earth’s first tools—still shape the morning.

I appreciate your toil:
those who work not for applause,
but for love, or calling, or simply to keep
a roof and a dream above their children’s sleep.
Every dollar is devotion, every task a prayer unspoken.

Forgive me -
for the times I complained unjustly,
when my hurry outweighed my humanity,
when I sighed at slow service
or frowned instead of thanked,
when I mistook your patience for obligation
and your presence for convenience.
Forgive my blindness,
when selfishness made me forget
the image of God in you.

I ache for hearts grown numb to such worth -
for those who dine, travel, and sleep in comfort
never pausing to wonder who made it possible.
Not in malice, only in forgetting they drift,
unaware of the quiet nobility
that lives by labored hands and aching backs.

I mourn for a world that drifts further each day,
where gratitude falters beneath the grind of noise,
where comfort breeds impatience
and entitlement dulls the grace of effort.
The sacredness of sweat...a kind of baptism...slips from memory,
while steady hands still turn the unseen world.

O sacred burden of the ordinary -
how holy the act of holding fast
when no one names your name.

For those who labor as though serving the Lord,
may your work be your worship,
your perseverance your praise.
The heavens keep record
of all the small obediences that make a life.

May the work of your hands be honored,
and the dust upon your palms shine like prayer.
For the world would crumble without you -
you, the quiet builders of dawn.