Launch Time at the Revolving Doors!

Everyone is put together differently. When we were in Scotland a few years ago on vacation the tour guide asked our group why it is that Americans always say back and forth. He said it makes more sense that you have to go forth before you can come back, therefore, they always say forth and back. Maybe this explains a lot of things, or maybe it doesn’t.

At any rate, we are all different and some of us are more different than others. Growing up I was taught to work. My granddad believed in it. He took seriously the impact of the curse that caused us to have to sweat for our living. The one thing he hated more than any other was laziness. His said lazy people were as sorry as white dog poop. He always had a quarter-acre vegetable garden and it required much in the way of maintenance. I remember once hoeing down a few tender corn stalks thinking that would get me out of having to work. He soon made me aware there are many uses for a hoe handle and once you get past the normal one used to chop weeds, the rest are not pleasant at all.

His commitment to labor was part of his identity and he always had something else in mind that could be done. I used to help him cut firewood in August for the coming winter. No power saws for him. We used a two-man hand crosscut saw and I can testify that doing it this way is work. I greatly admired how he could look at the top of a tree and determine exactly where it would fall. Once you get the hang of using this type of saw it will bring home the firewood. He always brought to his work a level of enthusiasm and commitment that separated the doers from the talkers. Looking back I can say these were some wonderful times.

When I began helping him cut wood he was already in his early sixties. The key to using a crosscut saw is cooperation and rhythm. He used to tell me not to ride the saw because he had not eaten my breakfast for me. He used to tell me that he would do enough grunting for both of us, so I didn’t need to do any. He carried a ‘big red’ soda bottle in his back pocket with pine straw stuffed in the top. The bottle was filled with kerosene and while we were heads down sawing, he would whip it out, oil the saw blade and never miss a beat. Once the tree was down, it would be trimmed, and then marked off for sizing with an ax, and then more sawing, and more sawing, until the old pickup truck was so loaded down the front tires were barely on the ground.

Maybe this is where I got my ideas about work and how it should be approached. I’m not saying I’ve never had a bad work experience or I’ve never had a bad day but most of my days that involve working have been filled with anticipation and enthusiasm. I commuted into downtown from the suburbs for over twenty years. I typically caught the first bus available at 5:30 a.m. I could read, study, or write on my way into town. But the closer I got to my destination; it was the more my thinking woke up. The bus let me off two blocks away from my building.

The closer I got to the building the faster I walked. All the things I had planned for that day were whirling around in my mind. Schedules, priorities, meetings, projects and activities had my neurons in overload. By the time I reached the revolving doors I was doing some traveling. May the good Lord help anyone who happened to be already in those doors when I came on the scene. I’m not proud to say this but on more than one occasion I’ve catapulted an unsuspecting soul. Pity the poor lawyer who came in early but went down like a hockey player with his briefcase flying across the floor. Pity the lady whose coffee made it at least twenty feet in the air. Sure I apologized. Sure I was sorry.

While I may not be as bad today, I must tell you these same motivational stimuli are alive and well. I wake up looking forward to making my way towards my place of employment. It’s a part of me. It’s a part of God’s answer to our sin cursed world where we must earn our way by the sweat of our brow. Thanks to my granddad for giving me an example to go by. Thanks be to God who gives me the desire to meet and exceed expectations in the work I do. I see many where I work today, especially the younger guys, who walk slower and slower the closer they get to their workstations. Their shoulders slump and they appear to barely be able to go. The way I see it they could use a little time on the other end of a crosscut saw to teach them something about work, because to tell you the truth I didn’t eat their breakfast for them! More later………….