Hammer Time

As a part of my job, i get the wonderful opportunity to do some amazing things. One of them is occasionally I get to spend all day operating a compressed air jack hammer. I know, I know, you are all thinking, "you lucky dog you.", but it is not quite as glamorous as it may sound. Sure, on the back ache and pain reliever commercials it looks great, but you can't believe everything you see on T.V. It really is quite tasking. Despite its apparent technical difficulty, when you spend as much time as I do operating one, it takes very little mental capacity to bust concrete into small pieces. As a result, my mind usually tends to wander. I find myself contemplating life's small mysteries like, "I wonder what is for supper tonight, why do some people say supper and others dinner, chowder is a funny word, if ants could talk would they still call their father's sister Aunt, Is that something shinny, wasn't Jack Nicholson in The Shinning?" you get the idea, not a whole lot going on in the upper room of the Rikel cranium.

Today, however, was different. The concrete I was pulverizing was being replaced because the people who originally poured it, poured it on mud. The most important part of constructing with concrete and almost everything else is a good solid foundation. So, concrete is usually poured on a good base of compacted aggregate. Now I am no engineer, but I learned enough about mud as a kid trying to catch tadpoles in our farm pond to know that something that will squish between your toes is probably not a solid foundation, although it is good for grossing out your older sister.

As i continued to hammer away at the concrete, I was reminded of Jesus talking about the wise man who built his house upon a rock and it stood against the storms and waves, and how the foolish man built his on sand and it came crumbling down. I am sure from the outside, both houses looked pretty much the same, but it was what was underneath that made the difference. i think that is the way we are a lot of times. People can look like they are as solid as concrete on the surface, but that is just a facade. Underneath their foundation is not built upon their relationship with Jesus. It is built on Pride, Materialism, Greed, Selfishness, and when things hit us we begin to crumble. I know there has been times when my foundation has not been made of what it needed to be and God took His jack hammer and pounded away what seemed to be a good surface until he got to my foundation and replaced it with "The Rock" a is in the process of building the man He desires me to be. One set upon the rock. And just like the concrete I will pour onto that solid base tomorrow, I may get run over, beat on, stormed on, but I will not be moved.

Crazy Man

About 10 years ago I was walking down the street in Nashville Tennessee after just coming out of a Promise Keepers event. I had just had an incredible experience with the presence of God. As we walked out of the arena, we were faced with the usual protesteors and demonstrators on the sidewalks. Feminist, Pro-Choice, pro-life, save the ameoba, all sorts of people trying to shout out what they thought I needed to hear. I however breezed right by them all and continued my stroll back to the van. As we walked past a Bar and grill with a little live country music spilling out into the evening air. I looked through the window at the people dinning and socializing and I thought, I wish all these people could experience what I had just experienced. So distracted by what I was thinking, I forgot to look ahead at where I was walking and quickly found myself about to run face first into someone. thanks to perifial vision, I was able to stop just in time to prevent knocking some unsuspecting soul to the concrete. As i looked up at my near victim, I saw a man standing on a crate with a bible in his hand. As if that was not enough to make me do a double take, the guy looked just like the crazy old Parson on one of the Poltergiest sequals. He was wearing a plain brown suit with one of those little string neck ties with some kind of big coin looking buckle around his neck. (Never understood those little things) He wore one of those" Little House on the Prairie" flat rim western hat, with kind of gumball machine center. (Not quite a Hawse Cartwright 10 galloon, but similar) He had long skinny teeth with a noticable gap between his front two, only to be highlighted by the fact that one of them was half missing. He looked at me with one eye, mainly because he had one of those crazy Marty Feldman eyes that just sort of revolved around like it had a mind of its own. He raise a bony finger toward my face and said "You will never be able to keep any promises (Going with the whole Promise Keepers theme) unless you Repent and Believe. Repent I say and be truly saved." I remember thinking "what a wacko" and just proceeding with my trek back to the van. Something about that man has always stuck in my mind. I remember thinking that he was over the top and no one could everpossibly take him seriously.
Now fast forward to present day. I was doing a little reading the other day about John the Baptist, and how he was quite the ecentric. the whole camel hair wardrobe, diet of locust and honey, living in the wilderness preaching "repent and be baptized." Who could ever take him seriously. Then I got to thinking about Paul. Whipped repeatedly, beaten, stoned, snakebit, shipwrecked, imprisoned, and the list goes on. I wonder if anyone ever had a near collision with him on the streets of Jerusalem and thought "What a wacko. Matthew - Tax collector, Peter - Fisherman, Elijah - taking on all the prophets of Baal and talking trash, running from Jezebel, being fed by Ravens, drought causing, dead child raising bonifide wacko. Noah - boat builder on dry land, flood predicter in a time that had never seen rain, STRANGE!
It seems all these guys in the Bible who were used by God to do great things, all seemed to have one thing in common. They probably looked off their rocker to the people around them. Despite being odd however, they all spoke the truth of God in their lives and God used them to fullfill a purpose. The funny thing is, I find myself wanting to be a lot more like the guy standing on the crate in Nasville, who at least was telling people how to experiencing God by repenting and believing than the guy walking down the street wishing people could experience God and doing nothing about it. I have become uncomfortable being the "run- of- the- mill Christian."mainly because I dont belive such a thing should exist. i no longer will be satisfied with not doing something about it. I think that following God will make you look like a crazy man. i believe it will make you be outside of the box, that you may actually end up standing on it shouting "Repent and Believe!"
So if you see me in the coming days and years doing something and you think "Paul has finally gone off the deep end." you are probably right, but thats ok. I would rather be nut from the tree of life, than a fungus on the trunk that just sits there and leeaches off the tree.
I guess I am just a crazy man