The Calender on the tool box

Something different happened.

I have been working in a shop that is very much a stronghold for the enemy and his forces that would govern this world. I had wondered for some time why G-d would put me in such a place.

For example, I had only been at this shop for a week when I was accused of stealing a rather expensive piece of equipment. Needless to say, I found this to be a bit discouraging. Even though the manager had told me to "go home", I was able to remain at the store and conduct my own investigation (as previously revealed, I had spent some time in law enforcement, and wasn't always "just a mechanic").

It was during the course of this investigation that two things (which I had thought were obvious, silly me) came to public light:

1) I didn't steal anything and was able to prove it rather easily, and

2) I was a Christian music minister and sometime youth pastor.

Now, the first factoid really surprised nobody. It was really quite easy to find out that the management team had been fed misinformation to draw attention away from the real perpetrators of this theft. It was the second that actually brought the most questions and revealed G-d's hand.

My co-workers to this point were, with one exception, all very young, between 17 and 25 years old. I have dental fillings older than that. These kids are full of the world and everything that it "promises". Before they found out some of the details of who I am, I had been regularly regaled with their, shall we say, recreational exploits, not to mention speech and "music" heavily laden with profane language.

And Then.... everything changed.

Suddenly, these same young people either were removed from employment (in part due to their involvement in the theft scandal) or became VERY subdued, especially around me. The new technicians brought in to replace those lost also made a point of "behaving themselves" when I was near. I was about to speak to one of them about this when they, in the form of a 25 year old journeyman tech, approached me.

What he asked was amazing.

"Why are you here, and how can I be more like you?"

Uuuuuhhhhh........ What? (Yoda would laugh at this point and say "Caught off guard, were you?")

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I was able to speak to this young man about his questions. It seems that he wanted to go into law enforcement, but had been stopped by outside forces at every turn. It also came to light that he was a young Christian who found himself caught up in the popularity contest that is the world and had given in to the various temptation the enemy has to offer. And he, this young man, wanted out.

I explained what it took to get into law enforcement and where he could go to get the training he sought. But, more importantly, I was able to share with him my story. His wasn't all that different from mine, and so I was able to connect with him and show him that G-d would, if asked, deliver him from the grasp of the enemy and the forces that held this young man in the corruption of the world.

For the remaining time he was at this shop (he has transferred to a shop closer to the school for law enforcement training) he refrained from profanity and the disrutive music and behavior that had characterized his daily routine prior to our short conversation.

G-d is good. All the time!

But it hasn't stopped there.

I have, on my tool box, a small flip-type daily bible verse calander. It gives me something to think about and study briefly before I hit the daily workload waiting for me. The calander had been there for a couple of weeks when I noticed something strange: Whenever I went on days off, the calender was always on the correct day when I came back to work.

Someone at the shop was reading the calender.

Now, it wasn't until very recently that a began to see who this might be, and may not have ever known had this person not come up and asked me another of those jaw-dropper questions.

He asked, "How do you become a Christian minister?"

Duh-uh....

What?!!??! This was a man who went out most nights with his buddies to have a beer (not necessarily a bad thing) and pick up women (hmmmm) at the local topless club (off the deep end).

It seems, once again showing G-d as mighty, that he has been hanging around with some of our mutual friends, when he wasn't at work, and that they had decided to get back to the things of G-d based on what my wife and I had been sharing with them.

He had been told by these friends that he needed to clean things up himself. It seems that these mutual friends had come to realize that, by surrounding themselves with things and people of G-d, they were better able to resist the temptations of the enemy. This is when my co-worker sought me out with his question.

Once again scraping my jaw off the floor I was faced with answering a question that would be a turning point in sopmeones life. Fortunately, G-d had answered that very question for me. "Go to the people of G-d", I said, "and seek to do what He would have you do. As you Grow in Him, others will seek this same knowledge through you. You will then find yourself in the role of 'minister'"

He has done exactly that.

My calender still gets turned.