February 14th, 2011 by adampotgiesser
Less than a month ago, I buried my great aunt. She lived to the rich age of 91. But I was stunned by something she told me as she lay on her death bed. She said that when she was very young, she heard her dad say these very hurtful words, “I wish you had been a boy.” Some 85 years later, some of the last thoughts my aunt would think were how deeply wounded she had been by those words as a little girl. The last word that someone shares says a lot about them. Some of her last words to be spoken were about the power of those words and how they had shaped her life.
What’s crazy is, she said several times that she knew that her dad loved her, but those words that her dad so carelessly spoke, lodged into my aunt’s heart like a fish hook under the skin, to stay lodged there until the day she died.
When I was young, my best friend and his dad took me bullheading. Bullheads, if you’re not aware are a primarily nocturnal fish. It was just before midnight when I caught a big bullhead. About that time a man appeared at the boat landing where we were fishing. Bullheads have stingers for whiskers and can be very painful if you touch them, so, having never removed a bull head from the hook, I was being very cautious. The man who had appeared and had been talking with us, who I might add was quite drunk, so my timidity, and jumped into help. He told me how to hold the fish, saying “hold the fish this way, and hold it here, and as I’m holding the fish he promptly removes the hook from the bullhead with a yank and imbeds the hook in my finger . . . well past the barb.
If you know anything about the barb on a fish hook, then you know that the barb is there to keep the fish from coming off the hook. Once in my finger, the only way to get the hook out of my finger was to push it through my finger until the barb appeared on the other side, and then cut the end of the hook off, and then back the hook out of my finger. As you can imagine, it was a very painful process.
Words are like fish hooks. Once they go inside a person, they have a type of barb on them that makes them stick inside us. Those words often don’t ever leave us, and therefore they will always continue to give us pain. Words have great power, and unless we go though great pain to remove them, they stay stuck inside of us, and the power of those words form us, create us, and at times kill us. We’ll talk more about this as we go along. Read the rest of this entry »
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February 7th, 2011 by adampotgiesser
Brick Layer’s Accident Report
Dear Sir:I am writing in response to your request for additional information in
Block #3 of the accident reporting form. I put “Poor Planning” as the
cause of my accident. You asked for a fuller explanation and I trust
the following details will be sufficient:
I am a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident, I was
working alone on the roof of a new six-story building. When I
completed my work, I found I had some bricks left over which when
weighed later were found to weigh 240 lbs. Rather than carry the
bricks down by hand, I decided to lowe r them in a barrel by using a
pulley which was attached to the side of the building at the sixth
floor.
Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the
barrel out and loaded the bricks into it. Then I went down and untied
the rope, holding it tightly to insure a slow descent of the 240 lbs
of bricks. You will note on the accident reporting form that my weight
is 135 lbs.
Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I
lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to
say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the building. In the
vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel which was now proceeding
downward at an equally impressive speed. This explains the fractured
skull, minor abrasions and the broken collarbone, as listed in Section
3 of the accident reporting form.
Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping
until the finge rs of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the
pulley which I mentioned in Paragraph 2 of this correspondence.
Fortunately by this time I had regained my presence of mind and was
able to hold tightly to the rope, in spite of the excruciating pain I
was now beginning to experience.
At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of bricks hit the
ground, and the bottom fell out of the barrel. Now devoid of the
weight of the bricks, the barrel weighed approximately 50 lbs. I refer
you again to my weight. As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent
down the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I
met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles,
broken tooth and severe lacerations of my legs and lower body.
Here my luck began to change slightly. The encounter with the barrel
seemed to slow me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell into the
pile of bricks and fortunately only three vertebrae were cracked.
I am sorry to report, however, as I lay there on the pile of bricks,
in pain, unable to move and watching the empty barrel six stories
above me, I again lost my composure and presence of mind and let go of
the rope… |
Does anyone here know Murphy? Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong will. Does anyone know Murphy? Does anyone here ever have bad things happen to them like this Brick Layer? Has anyone here ever been in an argument with your best friend, with your spouse, with your X? Has anyone here ever been in a car crash, been cut from a team, failed a test, gotten a bad review, been fired, downsized, etc, etc, etc. We could go on and on and most of these things have happened to us if we’ve lived very long.
Last week we talked about our vision of Heaven on Earth. We talked about the importance of keeping our eyes on God and who he created us to be, because we need vision in order to keep our eyes on what’s important in life.
Heaven on Earth is a great concept, but what about reality? What about all the bad stuff that we encounter every day of our lives? How are we to understand this, and how are we to navigate through it in a healthy, productive manner that moves us towards God’s vision of Heaven on Earth. How are we to understand and deal with all the bad stuff that happens in life? Read the rest of this entry »
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