Strange times we’re in. While there are many people that no longer have the job they held a month or two ago, many others now work from home. For those folks, the reality is that sometimes they just can’t produce the same quality from home that they’re able to at their normal place of business. I don’t advocate for shoddy workmanship, but it’s important to understand that if you’ve turned in low-quality work of some kind, all is not lost.
We’ve heard many times that God can take terrible things and use them for good. It’s like saying God loves us. We’ve heard it so many times we lose our appreciation for what it means. What if I told you there’s a story in the Bible where God used someone’s poor-quality work to both glorify Himself and accomplish His will at the same time? That might make you feel better when you’re unable to produce the same quality of work you’re accustomed to turning in.
There’s a story in 1 Kings 20 that has a funny little twist. The Bible often glosses over big events in a very short amount of time, and if you blink, you’ll miss it. In this case, the Israelites were at war with a numerically superior foe, the Arameans. Verse 27 says that the Israelites were like two little flocks of goats, but the Arameans covered the countryside.
The Lord was kinda mad at the Arameans in this engagement, so he enabled the Israelites to cut down 100,000 of their enemy in one day, and verse 30 says that the rest fled into a nearby city. Here’s where you’ll miss it if you blink: “But the rest fled to Aphek into the city, and the wall fell on 27,000 men who were left.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a wall large enough to fall on 27,000 men. In order to have a wall that big fall on so many people at once, we’re talking about failure at a spectacular level. The book doesn’t say anything about how that wall was constructed or what made it collapse; we just know that it happened, it was bad news for the Arameans, and it was all part of God’s plan.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not condoning work that’s intentionally sloppy or poor. If you can’t meet the level of what you’re ordinarily capable of though, do the best you can. There may be a divine purpose for that imperfection later on down the line.
Exiting an aircraft with Tony and his very recognizable jumpsuit
I’m certainly no skydiving guru. While I was a skydiving student, though, I had a few memorable jumps. I’m not sure what the requirement is now, but when I was working on getting my A License (the most basic jumping certification), the rule was that you had to accumulate at least 25 jumps and meet certain milestones along the way.
I was in the plane on the way up for my 23rd jump. The weather was turning sour, so this was the drop zone’s last load of jumpers for at least a few hours. We saw the cloud bank rolling in, and we were trying to rush up to altitude so we could jump out and land before the clouds obscured our view of the ground.
Another student named Jeremy and I were going to jump with our coach Tony. Tony was pretty familiar with us and we had all jumped together before. He wore a neon orange jumpsuit that was so bright it looked like it ran on batteries.
On a jump with Tony as my coach
I don’t remember what the freefall objectives of the jump were, but once we arrived at altitude we hopped out together and began going through our freefall plan. We fell through our predetermined “time to separate” altitude, so we broke apart to get some distance between us before we opened our parachutes. All three of us opened the chutes without a problem, but much to our surprise, the cloud cover had blown in much faster than we anticipated. We couldn’t see the ground anywhere. The only thing we had were our altimeters; we knew how high we were off the ground, but we didn’t know where we were in relation to the airport, so we couldn’t line up in our landing pattern. Since the wind was pushing us the whole time, the longer we floated aimlessly, the further off course we drifted, leaving us less margin of error for a safe landing at the airport.
Since Jeremy and I were still students, each of us had a one-way radio in our jumpsuit shoulder pockets. There was a guy on the ground with a walkie talkie that was waiting to spot us, and he would radio instructions about which way to turn and when to do it. Until we popped through the clouds though, it was useless for all of us.
Tony took the lead; he was the lowest jumper “under canopy,” so I followed him, and Jeremy followed me. I was glad Tony’s jumpsuit was so bright. It was eerie and unsettling to drift without direction in a thick fog. The last time we saw the airport, we were right over it, but the wind can be a lot stronger than you realize when you don’t have any visible references.
Suddenly we popped through the bottom of the clouds at a low altitude. The airport was impossibly far away! We had bled off so much altitude in the fog that there was no way we could make it back. Tony’s canopy had a much higher performance capability, so he made a break for the airport and was able to make it back. With our “vanilla” student rigs and oversized canopies, though, Jeremy and I had no chance of reaching the airport.
The dropzone where I learned to jump was home to the Guinness World Record holder of sport parachute jumps. Don Kellner, who just recently completed his 45,000th jump, was on the radio giving instructions to Jeremy and I. Don’s a funny guy; he doesn’t pull any punches, so he says it like it is and doesn’t sugar coat it.
“Well…find a place to land” came through the radio. Thanks Don.
We had blown way off course. We were now downwind not just of the runway, but of the entire airport complex, and we had a choice: land somewhere in a neighborhood, land somewhere in a wooded area, or land in a big rock quarry. Don advised us to shoot for the quarry.
When you’re a novice jumper, you usually have a flat patch of grass that’s as big as a football field to land on, and there’s usually plenty of other open space nearby (runways and the grassy areas next to them are usually pretty long). All of a sudden, a hilly rock quarry that didn’t have any wind indicators seemed like a pretty hostile place to land. It was the best of our bad options though, so we went for it.
With Tony out of the picture, I was now the lead in the flight pattern. I made a series of turns to get us lined up for what looked like the longest stretch of the flattest ground at the bottom of the quarry. We floated below the horizon and became committed to our flight path.
We both stumbled and took a few bumps and bruises as we tried running out our landings on the side of a hill. We made it safely to the ground without any blood or major injuries. After the canopies fell to the ground, we excitedly checked in with each other and exaggerated to each other just how truly awesome we were with lots of laughs, wild gestures to help relive the experience, and congratulatory slaps on the back. As we took a deep breath and looked around the bottom of this hole, we realized that we didn’t even know which way we should start climbing up out of the quarry. With all the midair turns we did, we lost all sense of direction and couldn’t even point to the airport or the nearest road.
Something tells me that we weren’t the first wayward skydivers to land in this quarry. Before we could even decide what to do, two of our other instructors, in their goofy neon jumpsuits, appeared on the rim of the quarry, shouting and waving to us. We were rescued!
Some general perspective on living: Life isn’t always going to go the way you planned. There are going to be times you find yourself traveling through a disorienting fog. Sometimes you’ll feel abandoned by the people you depended on (or you simply can’t keep up with them). In those times, when you’re at the bottom of a hole, someone might just show up to help you. They may not be what you expected, but it’s still an opportunity to find out which way to climb out of the hole.
We’re passing through strange times; it might not be a bad idea to accept a hand up when it’s offered. Keep your chin up; brighter days are coming.
I don’t know if you or
I are going to make it through this COVID-19 thing. I bet that we will, though.
How do Christians band together in a time of social distancing and self-quarantines? It’s an interesting question, and it’s going to take some innovative thinking. This is where the world needs your help.
Ordinarily the term
“disruptive” has a negative connotation. “He’s disruptive in class,” etc.
That’s not the only meaning of the word, thankfully. “Disruption” can also mean
an upsetting of established norms in such a way that it forces a new norm. It’s
what happened when motorized vehicles replaced horses. Digital cameras replaced
film cameras. Cell phones took over for landlines. Amazon.com came on the scene
and drove a lot of brick and mortar stores out of business. The people behind
these seismic shifts are known as “disruptors.”
Coronavirus has
certainly upended large portions of our lives and caused us to have to readjust
in major ways. Schools and colleges are all of a sudden shutting their doors
for the rest of the year. Churches are canceling in-person services. Bible studies
and prayer meetings can no longer meet in the traditional sense.
People don’t usually
like change. Well, this time around, a virus is forcing change on us all.
Things are changing so fast that we don’t yet have established “norms” in the
wake of this pandemic. For a lot of folks a major burden of our new reality is
the loneliness and lack of in-person human contact.
We were created to be
social beings. It’s simply how God made us. Some people need social interaction
a lot more than others, but we all need it to some degree. When we’re suddenly
unable to socialize in the ways to which we’re accustomed, it’s a major shock
for a lot of folks. As Christians, we’re often reminded in scripture to meet
together regularly, to “do life” together, and build one another up.
How do we do that when
we can’t meet in person? I’ve watched church on my computer for the past two
Sundays. I heard recently about a church that held a service at a drive-in
movie theater. I think that’s a fantastic idea, but those facilities are not as
common as they once were.
This is where you come
in. I’m challenging you to think like a disruptor. Because this is an actual
problem the world currently faces, I’d really like to encourage you to provide
comments here. Here’s your challenge:
How can people still meet together to build one
another up without physically being closer than six feet?
Technology is a mixed
bag. Now we can have meetings without even being near the other attendees. You
have Zoom, Facetime, and Skype, and those are incredibly valuable tools in some
respects. Connecting two users isn’t difficult, but it gets a little more
complicated if you want to have a dozen people in the same meeting. Also, when
you’re stuck in your home, it’s a poor substitute if you’re facing anxiety or
depression (to be sure, it’s better than nothing!). What other ways can we
leverage technology to decrease isolation? Please post your thoughts!
The phone also works.
I’m talking about actual voice calls. Everyone has phones, but nobody calls
anymore. For some people, chatting on the phone versus sending an email or text
goes a long way.
Then you have in-person
meetings. These days I yell to my neighbors from across the street. It doesn’t
quite have to be that far, but if you want to honor the authorities’ guidelines
of having meetings no larger than 10 people, no closer than six feet together,
is there a way to make that happen feasibly? This might be a ridiculous mental
image, but it’s a thought-prompt; is there a way to have a dozen people sit
close together by building little plexiglass “cells” (imagine a scene from a TV
show or movie where someone is visiting someone else in prison)? What if a
dozen cars came together in a circle in an otherwise empty church parking lot
and everyone on the driver’s side of the car rolled down their windows to have
a discussion? (That circle is probably a little too big and everyone would need
hearing aids and megaphones, but can we make the idea work somehow?)
I don’t know what the
answer is, I’m just trying to get the creative juices going. Right now
Christians (and non-Christians, for that matter) need ways of meeting together
and helping each other up after they fall or get knocked down. A lot has
happened, and a lot of change has been forced on us. How can we implement
change on our own to make this situation a little more bearable, especially for
the people that need to be around other people?
“How does my idea
help?” Well, you’re reading this, aren’t you? I don’t normally have a huge readership, but you’re not the only
one that reads this. Your idea, even if it’s incomplete, can spark an idea for
someone else. Let’s say you have no ideas. That’s okay, you can still help
crack the code on this problem. Will you pass this entry on, either by
forwarding it to someone or sharing it on your social media?
You
are a string, but we are a rope. We WILL get through this…maybe
in part by using your ideas.
There’s an old
problem-solving technique called “The Five Whys.” It’s simple in its execution.
You start with a problem:
We can’t go on the vacation we’ve been planning.
Ask: Why? (Number 1)
We had to spend a big chunk of that money on a car
repair.
Ask: Why? (Number 2)
The car broke down unexpectedly.
Ask: Why? (Number 3)
(Sheepishly) Because I haven’t been maintaining it.
The idea is that by the
time you’ve asked “Why?” five times, you’ve arrived at the root cause of the problem
you’re facing.
King David is one of
the most famous characters in the Bible. He had incredible highs and also some
very low lows. In the end, this “man after God’s own heart” was an imperfect
human, but he always sought God’s mercy and forgiveness.
His most famous shortcoming
occurred with a beautiful woman named Bathsheba. Here’s a quick refresher from 2 Samuel chapter 11:
11 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.
2One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her.
Bathsheba, of course, became pregnant. David made matters
worse by trying to cover it up, and when that didn’t work, he had Bathsheba’s
husband intentionally killed in battle. It took a prophet to confront him in
order to make him admit his wrongdoing. While there’s much we can learn
from David, we’ll focus on this tragic tale and try to apply a lesson to our
own lives. Let’s use the “Five Whys” with David’s situation:
David got taken to task by Nathan the prophet for murdering an innocent man.
Why? (Number 1)
David ordered the death of Uriah, one of his faithful warriors.
Why? (Number 2)
He had an affair with Uriah’s wife Bathsheba.
Why? (Number 3)
David saw her bathing on the rooftop and decided that he had to have her.
Why? (Number 4)
He wasn’t where he was supposed to be, fighting with his army at Rabbah.
And here we have the root cause. The text doesn’t say why David remained
behind in Jerusalem; it just says that he did. By not being with his army, as
was the custom of the day’s kings, it opened the door to temptation, which
resulted in adultery, lies, and murder.
While you may not be in charge of an army, there’s probably been at least one time in your life when
something bad happened because you were somewhere you didn’t belong.
The lesson here? Be where you’re supposed to be.
If you’re a Christ-follower, God has equipped and tasked you to perform
certain functions or roles here on Earth. Once you know what He wants you to
do, you can either run from it (think Jonah) or you can work toward it (think
Paul). The road is never guaranteed to be easy, but there’s peace of mind when
you work toward it. Running from it causes restlessness, unrest, and numerous
complications.
The simplest way to avoid all of that? Be where you’re supposed to be.
Your
decisions have consequences, but don’t let those consequences put limits on
you.
In college I majored in
Biology, but I went the first three semesters without identifying what I wanted
to focus my studies on.
You can get through your
college experience that way, but I wouldn’t advise it. The best part about this
route was the blissful ignorance of those first three semesters. I attended a Christian
liberal arts college, where as a part of the degree requirements, each student
had to complete courses from a wide array of educational topics to round out
his or her knowledge base. In those early semesters in college I took courses
in anything from Biblical Literature to Psychology to Math to Spanish to Ethics
to Macroeconomics to Tennis.
I’m not sure why it
took me so long to realize it, but after awhile I figured out that I was
running out of these “Gen Eds” to take. I needed to figure out how to fill the
remaining five semesters. In an epiphany, I began to understand that I needed
to figure out what I wanted to declare for my major. I ended up selecting
Biology with an Environmental Emphasis.
As you can imagine, if
you want to major in a science, it means you’ll need to take lots of science courses.
That’s not a bad thing as long as you start on them right away, but if you wait
to get started on them, like I did, it means you’re living, eating, and
breathing science classes later on.
After my realization I
worked with my faculty adviser to figure out how to make it work. I was a Bio
major, but didn’t get signed up for the most basic of biology classes until
halfway through my second year. Then I signed up for a four-week summer Bio
course with class all morning and lab work all afternoon, Monday through
Friday. (My brain nearly melted during that class. I was an average student
that just finished my Sophomore year, and most of the other students in the
course were Freshmen honors students that had spent a semester abroad and now just
needed to catch up.)
Junior year was also
packed with science classes, but I still managed to “kick the can down the
road” with one of the key requirements for a Biology major: two semesters’
worth of Chemistry. By the time I began Senior year and started getting into
Chemistry, I realized that I was in over my head. I couldn’t stand Chemistry.
The professors were great, but I had a terrible time grasping a lot of the
material. I had waited until my last two semesters to take two semesters of
Chemistry. There would be no withdrawing from the class to arrange a more
convenient courseload.
It was already a busy
year…I had a Senior Seminar to deliver, I was the Vice President of the Paddle
Sports club, I had a few work/study jobs, a buddy and I were getting ready to
drive out to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, I had a weekly workout
routine at the gym, and there was general fun to be had (after all, it was
Senior year!).
Even with all I had
going on, my whole senior year began to revolve around how I could pass
Chemistry. I skipped out on some pranks or outings that would have been fun to
be a part of. There was a study group that I started attending each time it
met. I linked up with one of the Chemistry Majors, who never seemed to sleep,
for help on my homework when I was frustrated and at the end of my rope. With
plenty of patience he walked me through each problem. Joel, if you’re out
there, thanks for all your help! You saved my bacon!
After all of the
craziness and mental anguish, I finally passed both semesters of Chemistry.
Never was I so happy to complete two classes.
I whine about it, but this
was a crisis of my own making. Because of the choices I made, I backed myself
into a corner and made my path to success much more difficult. Here’s the
tie-in: even when you become a Christian, your problems don’t go away. God
loves you and forgives you if you’re truly sorry, but you must still live with
the consequences of your past actions.
Becoming a Christian
does not remove all the pain and agony you face. In some ways it makes things
more difficult. The good news is that a relationship with Christ gives you hope
and strength to face each day, even when each day has repercussions of your
previous actions.
As one of God’s chosen,
He provides what you need to overcome each obstacle. You may have made your
circumstances more complex, but He’s the one that is able to supply for all of
your needs. Christianity
is not an escape from your problems; it is an opportunity to have hope when
facing them. Consider that as you work toward becoming the person He
wants you to be.
In the Air Force I
spent about four or five weeks preparing to pass a screening course for
survival instructor candidates. As the time drew near for us to move from
preparation to test time, the tone of training got more serious. Up until now
we had been building our bodies and learning skills, but there was plenty of
goofing off, too. The culmination of our time at Indoc was a nine-day course
that was split between rigorous assignments on base and in the barracks for the
first half, followed by a period of being out in the field for the second half.
On the last Friday
before the course began, it was tradition for instructors to run students through
“The Swamp.” The Swamp was a nasty section of Lackland Air Force Base that was
just what it sounds like. Making it through the event was not a prerequisite for
the course, but it was a way for students to begin making the transition from
head knowledge to experience. (It was also fun for the instructors to do.)
A large portion of Air
Force Basic Training was focused on professional appearance, making the uniform
look good, and establishing a proper demeanor for recruits now living in one of
the armed services. While that’s important and has its time and place,
preparing to be a survival instructor carried with it a totally different set
of objectives. The goal in a survival situation is to do just about whatever it
takes to survive and return to friendly territory. A survival instructor goes
through grueling circumstances so they better understand how to convey that
crucial information to the students they’ll later teach. The Swamp helped students further
overcome their reluctance to take actions they might not otherwise take.
Our outing started with
some laps up and down a steep hill while wearing heavy rucksacks. We then made
our way to the edge of the water. As we got near, we could smell the nasty,
stinky, stagnant swamp. It was muddy, had some gross stuff floating in it, and
we could only imagine what lived there.
We made our way to
where the instructor indicated, then set down our rucks. We weren’t dirty
enough yet, so he had us start low crawling through some of the muddiest channels.
Naturally, you try to keep your head out of the mud when doing something like
that, but that’s exactly what our instructor wanted to break us out of doing.
“C’mon, get some mud on your face!”
All of us got herded into an area on the bank of the water, where we started taking turns leading exercises in soaked, muddy uniforms and heavy, waterlogged boots. Pushups, crunches, flutter kicks, eight-count bodybuilders, all sorts of calisthenics made more difficult or tricky by our environment. During flutter kicks, while our soaked boots were up in the air, water would run out of our boots and down our legs. On another occasion I remember that the ground was so soft, while I was in the pushup position my hands sunk down past my elbows into the mud. I couldn’t even bend my elbows to do pushups anymore! We alternately laid on our backs, then on our stomachs, all of us covered in mud except for our necks and heads.
Finally the instructor flat out told us to get every inch
of ourselves covered in mud. Then, for his
idea of a fun photo-op (which I think is fun too, in retrospect), he had us
find some kind of plant to put somewhere on ourselves. By this time, you could hardly even distinguish
between the students.
It’s tough to see, but yours truly is the fifth from the left
After awhile, our
instructor called an end to the experience. We all headed back toward the bus.
Since we couldn’t just walk onto the bus in our current condition, though, we
had to get all the mud off. The stinky, dirty, nasty water that once seemed to
stink so badly now washed us clean. We walked waist-deep into the water, bent
down so the water was up to our neck, and in some cases even went all the way
under. Considering how clean we looked when we came up, you wouldn’t know the
water was so disgusting and swampy. It later took a few trips through the
washing machine for those uniforms to become free of the swamp stink, but they
eventually recovered.
This was a crazy
experience. It was challenging, certainly, but it was very valuable. All the
physical training we’d suffered through for weeks, or even months in some cases,
and now this situation, demonstrated something very interesting to all of us:
if we try pushing ourselves to the limit, we’ll arrive at our self-imposed
mental blocks much sooner than we reach our actual limits. Maybe it’s been
awhile since someone asked you: “Are you giving it everything you’ve got?”
Maybe nobody’s ever asked you the follow-on question: “Yeah, but, are you really giving it your all?”
It’s also valuable to
understand that when you’re confronted by difficult (or even miserable)
circumstances, it’s a lot more tolerable when you have others there with you. If
you’re headed toward something tough, link up with a few others so you can encourage
each other along the way. Alternatively, keep your eyes peeled for someone who’s
alone in the mud right now. It could be more encouraging than you’ll ever know
for them to see someone wading into the mess to come alongside them.
(To see other posts related to the survival instructor indoctrination course, click here.)
A view of Earth rising above the lunar surface during Apollo 8
When I was a kid I
wanted to be an astronaut. I loved learning about the space race of the 1960s
and 70s, and at one point I knew the name and assigned crew position of every
Apollo astronaut that flew on a mission during the Apollo Program.
In 1961 the Americans
had barely touched space. America’s first man in space, Alan Shepard, didn’t
even complete an orbit; the weak rocket he used only got him high enough to
kiss the edge of space. The Soviets had already sent their first Cosmonaut into
orbit, and this launch was a weak American response, barely doing enough to
keep us in the race. Less than three weeks later, American President Kennedy
threw down the audacious goal of beating the Soviets in a manned mission to the
moon before the end of the decade, as a way of establishing American
preeminence in space.
Thus began a harrowing
eight or nine years for NASA. It had to not only figure out the best strategy
for meeting the goal, but it also had to develop skills and equipment that didn’t
exist.
The process moved fast
and grew increasingly complex with time. First NASA sent up one astronaut at a
time, and the longest that any mission stayed up was just over a day. Then it
started launching two astronauts at a time. They started to do spacewalks, to
rendezvous with other orbiting objects, and to see if a capsule and crew could
physically last for the two weeks in space that it would take to make it to the
moon and back. Finally, it was time for the Apollo missions, which carried
three men and the ability to use a lunar lander that would be used to land on
the moon.
By all measures, Apollo
was a beast of a program. The spacecraft systems’ subsystems had subsystems. Engineers
working on the spacecraft worked in round-the-clock shifts, and projects still
fell behind schedule. Everyone worked at a breakneck speed to get things ready
to meet the deadline. In January 1967, the first Apollo mission finally drew
near. Three astronauts sat atop their huge rocket and conducted a final test to
demonstrate that all systems were ready to operate on their own.
Then an unmitigated disaster
struck, freezing everything in its tracks. As the rocket still sat on the
launch pad, a ferocious fire erupted inside the cabin, and killed the three
astronauts before they could escape from the capsule. The fire killed America’s
second man in space, its first spacewalker, and a rookie astronaut. The
devastating setback stunned the nation. All work stopped while NASA, the
spacecraft contractors, and even Congress sought answers to what went wrong and
whether the moon was worth the cost.
Fellow astronauts escort Grissom’s body to Arlington Cemetery
It wouldn’t be until
October 1968, more than a year and a half, before another manned American
launch occurred…an eternity when considering JFK’s looming end-of-the-decade deadline.
With time running out, everyone needed to figure out how to grieve but still
move forward. In the miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon,” Wally
Schirra, the commander of the first space mission after the fire, was asked
about preparing for his upcoming launch while living in the shadow of the
Apollo 1 tragedy. He responded “You’re sad. You mourn the loss.” He paused
for a moment before adding “But you don’t wear the black armband forever.”
Without question, there
are tragedies in peoples’ lives that knock them down hard. The death of a loved
one; a betrayal by someone you trust; a feared diagnosis; a job loss; a
terrible injury; an addiction you’re fighting through. There are serious and
legitimate times in our lives when we just can’t be an effective contributor to
God’s kingdom. Nobody faults you for things that are beyond your control. It
takes time to fight through many of these problems, and many times God will
make something good out of them. Just make sure that you don’t start using your
sorrows and difficulties as an excuse not to move forward with what God’s
calling you to do.
You’re the only one
that knows whether or not this is an issue you’re dealing with. You WILL be knocked down;
Jesus promised that we’d have trouble in this world. Sometimes you need to stay
down for a minute, but don’t forget that you do need to get back up again.
Don’t wear the black
armband forever. There are people you might not even know about that are
waiting for you to get back up again.
