Fascinated by Heavy Equipment

I grew up around the construction industry. My father was a road contractor and I got to see some of his jobs in progress. I even rode a huge Caterpillar bulldozer when I was a kid, I thought that was too cool.

When JD, my son, was much younger someone came out with the brilliant idea of filming trucks and heavy equipment and putting it on video for children to watch. I was in the construction industry at the time, working with heavy concrete construction and quarry operations. Yet when we parked JD in front of the TV to watch "Here Comes a Truck" I was right there with him enjoying the show.

In 1995 I became an associate pastor of a church that was just beginning a construction project. My office window looked right into the project and would eventually be bricked over by the new work. Until that time I had a window on the work. One day they were pouring the concrete floor and the smell of diesel from the ready-mix trucks was pretty strong. All the other church employers went home early but the senior pastor accused me of standing at my opened window and taking in the aroma I had come to know so well.

As I write this there is a man-lift in our worship center changing light bulbs. We also have a crane alongside our building installing a compressor to cool our worship center. I've only been outside three times to watch. Believe me, if they had only asked I would have jumped in to help in any way possible. After all, how hard can it be to operate a crane, right? (Said with a completely unreal grasp on reality.)

I don't know what it is with kids and men that heavy equipment fascinates us, but it does. I just can't help but watch. I find it fascinating. The other day I read a sermon by a preacher who spoke of being fascinated by Christ. He was fascinated by the way that Christ was at work in the world. Changing lives. Making a difference. He found himself being fascinated enough to be drawn into to help make that difference happen.

I like to speak about the need we all have to make a difference in the world. That need was created in us by the One who created us. If we all become fascinated by the way that Christ is working in the world we can begin to be drawn in to making a difference ourselves. At that point we need to ask ourselves "How can I be most useful to God?" If I sat down at the controls of the crane, usefulness is not the word that anyone would use. But in my construction industry experience I had learned the hand signals that are given to a crane operator to help them place things where their view is blocked. I could have been useful in that way if I were invited to jump in.

In what ways are you called to be useful? Let me invite you now to jump into ministry and allow yourself to be truly useful to God in making a difference in this world. That would just be fascinating, wouldn't it?