Do You Have Dirty Fingernails?
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
“What we need is cleaner minds and dirtier fingernails.” – Will Rogers
Mike Rowe is a popular TV personality who is best known for hosting Dirty Jobs and Somebody’s Gotta Do It. Dirty Jobs highlights blue-collar workers and the invaluable – and often underappreciated – services that they provide, whereas Somebody’s Gotta Do It features innovators, entrepreneurs, and everyday hobbyists turned fanatics who admittedly “march to the beat of a different drum”.
Rowe isn’t really a blue-collar guy himself. After all, he graduated from Towson University with a degree in communication studies after excelling in theater in high school. He has also performed with the Baltimore Opera, partly to help overcome a childhood stuttering problem.
However, Rowe does have a true affinity for men and women who get their hands and their fingernails dirty. That is why the Ford Motor Company chose him to pitch their F-series trucks and Caterpillar, the world's largest manufacturer of construction equipment, did the same. It is also why Mike started the mikeroweWorks Foundation in 2008.
According to its website, the foundation was conceived because Mike Rowe is addicted to “paved roads, working electricity, and flushing toilets”. In other words, he cares about American infrastructure and the vocations that are necessary to build and maintain it. It naturally follows that one of the foundation’s slogans is “Make work cool again”.
Will Rogers, an old cowboy turned vaudeville comedian and movie star, had a lot in common with Mike Rowe. So, for that matter, did Jesus and His father Joseph, who were carpenters by trade.
Likewise, the Apostle Paul helped subsidize his itinerant preaching and church planting ministry by sewing tents (see Acts 18:1-3). I guess that’s why he had the following advice for the churches in Ephesus and Thessalonica…
“He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing good with his own hands, that he may have something to share with the one in need.” Ephesians 4:28 (BSB)
“Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before.” I Thessalonians 4:13 (NLT)
- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President
