You can’t make it to the meditation retreat. You don’t have time for the spiritual workshop. Your days are filled with work, with chores, with the endless repetition of ordinary life.

Where is the sacred in all of this?

The Gospel of Thomas records one of Jesus’s most expansive answers:

“I am the light that is over all things. I am all: all came forth from me, and all attained to me. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.”

Split a piece of wood. Lift up a stone.

This isn’t temple language. This is workshop language. Quarry language. The language of manual labor.

And Jesus says: I am there.

The Claim

Let’s not move past this too quickly. The claim here is extraordinary.

First, Jesus identifies himself with the light over all things. Not a light. The light. Not above some things but above all things.

Second, he claims to be the source and destination of everything. “All came forth from me, and all attained to me.” Everything originates from him. Everything returns to him.

Third, and most surprisingly, he locates himself in the most ordinary activities imaginable. Not in the temple. Not in prayer. Not in the holy of holies. In splitting wood. In lifting stones.

The scholar Evelyn White noted that these two activities represent the most common types of strenuous labor in the ancient world. The combination of splitting wood and lifting stones appears in Ecclesiastes 10:9, where the Preacher warns of the dangers of such work.

Jesus takes the same activities and makes them sites of divine encounter.

Not Pantheism, But Presence

Some readers interpret this saying as pantheism: the teaching that God is everything and everything is God. That’s not quite what’s happening here.

Jesus doesn’t say “I am the wood” or “I am the stone.” He says he is there when you split the wood, there when you lift the stone. The distinction matters.

The Gnostic understanding is subtler. The divine light has descended into the material world. Fragments of that light exist within creation. When you engage with matter, you encounter the light that pervades it.

A related saying appears in the Gnostic Gospel of Eve: “In all things I am scattered, and from wherever you wish you collect me.” The divine is dispersed throughout creation, waiting to be recognized and gathered.

This isn’t the claim that everything is divine. It’s the claim that the divine is present within everything, hidden, waiting to be found.

Why Labor?

Of all the activities Jesus could have chosen, why manual labor?

Consider what splitting wood and lifting stones have in common:

They require presence. You can’t split wood while daydreaming. You’ll hurt yourself. These tasks demand attention, engagement, being fully where you are.

They’re embodied. There’s no way to split wood abstractly. Your hands grip the axe. Your arms swing. Your back absorbs the impact. The work happens through the body.

They’re universal. Not everyone had access to the temple. Not everyone could read Scripture. But everyone worked. The peasant splitting wood for fuel and the laborer lifting stones in the quarry could find divine presence as easily as the priest in the sanctuary.

They produce no lasting monument. Split wood burns. Lifted stones go into walls that eventually crumble. This isn’t the work of legacy-building. It’s the work of sustaining ordinary life.

Jesus seems to be saying: You don’t have to go anywhere special. You don’t have to do anything extraordinary. The sacred is present in what you’re already doing.

The Pessimism of Ecclesiastes

The reference to Ecclesiastes is telling. The Preacher is famously gloomy about the value of human labor:

“He who quarries stones may be hurt by them, and he who splits logs may be endangered by them.”

Ecclesiastes sees danger and futility in work. All is vanity. Everything passes away. Even your labor can injure you.

Jesus takes the exact same activities and inverts their meaning. Yes, you’re splitting wood. Yes, you’re lifting stones. But you’re not alone. The light that pervades all things is present with you. The one from whom all things came forth is right there, in the wood grain, under the stone, in the swing of your arm.

This transforms work from meaningless toil into sacred encounter.

Practical Implications

What does it mean to take this teaching seriously?

Any moment can be a moment of encounter.

We tend to divide life into sacred and profane. The spiritual happens at church, on retreat, during meditation. The rest is just getting through the day.

Saying 77 collapses that division. The same presence available in your deepest meditation is available while you’re doing the dishes. The same light that illuminates peak spiritual experiences pervades your commute.

The question isn’t whether the divine is present. It’s whether you’re paying attention.

Work becomes practice.

If Christ is present in labor, then labor itself can be spiritual practice. Not as escape from work into spiritual thoughts, but as engagement with work in a different mode.

The split wood isn’t an obstacle to presence. It’s an occasion for it. The heavy stone isn’t pulling you away from the spiritual. It’s inviting you deeper.

Thich Nhat Hanh spoke of washing dishes to wash dishes. The Zen tradition teaches chopping wood, carrying water as enlightened activity. Saying 77 places Jesus in this same stream: ordinary labor as direct encounter with the divine.

You don’t have to go anywhere else.

This is perhaps the most liberating implication. You don’t need to travel to a holy site. You don’t need a special teacher. You don’t need to wait for better circumstances.

The divine is here, now, in whatever you’re doing.

Thomas 77 is the antidote to spiritual FOMO. The fear that you’re missing out, that the real experience is happening somewhere else, that you need something you don’t have. None of that is true.

Split a piece of wood. Lift up a stone. Christ is there.

The Hidden Kingdom

This teaching connects to others in the Gospel of Thomas. Saying 113 declares that the kingdom is “spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it.” Saying 3 claims the kingdom is “inside you and outside you.”

Thomas 77 tells us where, exactly, to look. Not in the extraordinary. Not in the removed. In the wood and the stone. In the tasks at hand. In the labor of ordinary life.

The kingdom is hidden in plain sight, waiting for those with eyes to see.

A Practice

Try this for one day:

Before each task, however mundane, pause. Remember: “I am the light that is over all things.” Remember: “Split a piece of wood, and I am there.”

Then do the task. Not faster. Not as a means to something else. As itself. As a place where the divine might be encountered.

Washing dishes. “Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.”

Writing an email. “I am the light that is over all things.”

Commuting to work. “All came forth from me, and all attained to me.”

At the end of the day, notice: Did anything shift? Did the ordinary feel different when approached as sacred?

This is the experiment Thomas 77 invites.

For Those Who Feel Far From Spiritual Practice

This teaching is especially for you.

If you feel guilty about not meditating enough, not praying enough, not reading enough spiritual books, hear this: the divine is present in what you’re already doing.

If you feel excluded from spiritual community, unable to access the resources others have, hear this: the same light available in elaborate rituals is available in your kitchen, your office, your commute.

If you feel that ordinary life is keeping you from spiritual life, hear this: ordinary life is spiritual life, for those who recognize what’s already present.

Split a piece of wood.

Lift up a stone.

The light that is over all things is there.

The Gospel of Thomas is available in translation in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (Marvin Meyer, ed.) and at various online repositories. For scholarly commentary on Saying 77, see the work of Evelyn White and April DeConick.