Art to Heart Benediction

Vincent van Gogh: The Road Menders

©2002 by Jeff Dugan

Vincent van Gogh had a special love for people who work with their hands and their backs and their sweat.  Though he was a painter, van Gogh saw himself not as an intellectual, but as a manual laborer who arrived at his achievements only by a great deal of hard work.  But even before he ever took up painting, he had served as a minister to a desperately poor community of coal miners, and was so determined to help them bear their burdens that he nearly died from his efforts.

So it’s natural that van Gogh would find a compelling subject in this road repair crew.  But if you were going to paint a portrait that honored these workers, is this painting anything like the way you would compose it?  Wouldn’t you think the workers themselves would be more prominent than they are here?  Instead, it’s almost as if these enormous old tree trunks are the real focus of the painting.  Also interesting is the fact that the trees’ upper branches entirely block out the sky, reaching across the street to the left, to join with branches of trees on the other side.  We can assume that a similar arch is formed over the street on the right.

Noticing the tree trunks and the arching branches, we begin to get a sense of the space that reminds us of the interior of a great European cathedral.

With that in mind, it’s possible, then, to see the road repair work in an entirely new way.  Perhaps van Gogh has chosen to honor these laborers by suggesting that their dirty, scarred hands are the hands that do God’s work on earth and glorify Him more than the most elaborate marble edifice. 

So, yes, the painting does honor manual laborers, and does so in a poetic way.  But it also connects these workers with the Messiah who came to us with a hands-on ministry, who with sweat and labor did God’s work on earth and glorified Him more than any church building ever will, and who, with dirty and scarred hands, actually did die bearing our burdens.

So take courage in the coming days, when the burdens of your life of labor seem to be overwhelming.  Your work, no matter how grim, no matter how menial, no matter how stressful, has been blessed by God.  God himself did not shrink from the dirty work necessary to save our souls.  From that moment, work was transformed – from the punishment for sin into the means by which sin is overcome.  May your days of labor be blessed, then, because all work – your work – is sacred.