Monday Matters Lent: Day 7
The New Job
When I was in college I got a new job. It was coveted by the kids at Trevecca, at least the ones who had to do serious work to pay their school bills. I filled out the application, did the interview, took the aptitude tests, and, to my delight, was hired by UPS, the guys in the brown trucks.
This was before the days of Amazon. FEDEX was just getting started and was primarily for businesses. If you wanted a package delivered to your home from Sears and Roebuck, or Radio Shack, UPS was your chief option. And it was cool. Brown box truck. Young, handsome, muscular guy in a brown shirt and brown shorts. I mean, UPS driver was right up there next to airline pilot, or stock broker. Everyone knew that the pay was great, the company was growing, and your future was set if you could just get the job.
Just two little things, I was not the young, handsome, muscular guy in the brown truck. No, for every guy coming to your doorstep, there were a hundred in a loud, dingy warehouse unloading the big trucks from parts unknown and reloading the brown box trucks for the superstars. Thousands of packages flying down conveyor belts that had to be sorted, sized, and stacked with precision and speed. In fact, when they hired me for the job, the interviewer said, “We are going to pay you for 8 hours and you only have to work 4. The bad news is, you have to do 8 hours of work in 4 hours.” It was hot, hard, and hectic. Boxes and packages just kept flying and whatever your station, loading, unloading, or sorting, they did not stop.
Which leads to the other thing, once you were trained, (a 30 minute conversation with a kid 2 years younger than me about lifting with my legs) you were on your own. The boxes started coming. Help did not. I would go as fast as I could, throwing, piling, organizing. Trying to get as much stuff into as small a space as possible. But inevitably, there would be too many boxes. They would begin to backup. The line would backup. The whole plant would backup. And the whistle would blow. Then I would backup because the supervisor was on his way with several very graphic descriptions of my work ethic and my general IQ. He’d jump in and in 15 minutes do what I had struggled with over the last 2 hours. (He must of been paid for 16 hours work in 4 hours) And the line would start again.
I followed their same philosophy. I did 40 years of work in 2 weeks and then I quit.
The reading today is Matthew 10:16-20, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves…” Sometimes the job of serving Jesus is harder than we think. There are troubles, and trials, and temptations, and that’s before we leave home in the morning. We are ridiculed, persecuted, mocked, and that just by the other church people. And we fail and fall down more often than we want to admit. We fumble with our words, mix up our Bible verses, and forget three of the four spiritual laws.
Don’t worry, the whistle will blow and the supervisor will step in. He is the Holy Spirit. He’s been on the job a long time and He knows exactly what to say and just what you need.
The secret is one package at a time. Pick up one box, deal with it, then go on to another. That’s how we do the God Job. We just handle what’s right in front of us, “don’t worry about tomorrow, it will have enough worries of its own.” And we stay comfortable in the fact that, if we get too overwhelmed, He will just stop the line for a while, wrap His arms around us, and remind us that we are working for Him. “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give you.”
Stay with the job today. Don’t get overwhelmed or discouraged. He is using you to do “greater things than He has done.” And if you are faithful you might get to drive the brown box truck