Unrecognized Holiness

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/080917.cfm
NM 13:1-2, 25–14:1, 26A-29A, 34-35
MT 15: 21-28

We run into holy men and women in our lives every day, but we don’t necessarily recognize them. They stand before us in the oddest of places. My most recent run in was with Ray, Carl, Harold, and Emmanuel, a four-man crew of electricians who march through their days under the guidance of the Holy Trinity. Not exactly where you’d expect to be awakened to God.

All four men attribute their lives to the loving conversion and rescue of Jesus Christ, but you only know it if you spend time with them. Besides the Christian music playing in the background while they work, the steady portrayal of progress in their activities, and recovery from setbacks, is constantly attributed to the love of the Father and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Each has their own story of redemption, but all of these things only come out in the bits of conversation that flows amid the regular day of work.

On Monday, Ray, the aging head electrician, just a few years older than me, scoped out a potentially severe problem in a brand new kitchen built upon an also new 4” concrete floor. He explained that the kitchen power was sourced from the electrical panel about 40 feet away. It all ran underground buried beneath two stone walls and a 15 foot long wood framed separation of the living area from the bedrooms. Metal conduit ran deep in the floor, wandering that full length and then popped up in the kitchen where a gas stove and electric range sat ready to be hooked up. Unfortunately, the wrong wire had been run underground. A set of small insufficient 12 gauge, 20 amp wires ran in the conduit, rather than a proper large 8 gauge 50 amp bundle of wires.

The wrong set of wires was my fault. I had specified a gas unit, not realizing that the oven I had selected ran on electricity. Only the stove top used gas. I have gotten used to such mistakes over the course of renovating an old four-story building. The blunders have mounted over the past five years, some requiring a month or more in time lost. It’s very fortunate that I haven’t been in a hurry.

I have gotten used to approaching each problem ready for setbacks. Though in the final stages of work on this property tearing up concrete and running a new electric line would be incredibly difficult to take. My shoulders began to sag under the weight of a further miscalculation; albeit a regular, almost daily factor in construction. Plans on paper don’t translate automatically into logic in the field.

“God is with us on this,” Ray said, matter of factly, in his slow Southern way of speaking. He invisibly enumerated the places where the Holy Spirit had been involved. First of all, he graciously included he and his crew in my mistaken specifications on the gas range. The Holy Spirit cares for us all, and joins us together. He noted that he had personally seen to the run of the conduit pipe from the panel to the kitchen previous to the pouring of the concrete. That was three years ago. “I was talking to the Holy Spirit about it at that time, I remember,” he said.

Ray had been prepared for such a confusion, and made sure the conduit line ran straight in the concrete. Lots of bends and turns would be disadvantageous later. Consequently, the repair to my mistake would not require any digging, and only meant a straight-forward pull of new 8 gauge wire inside the conduit, yanking out the 12 gauge as part of the replacement. 

A subsequent minor miracle had also taken place. Ray’s son Carl, had seen the opportunity to run only one line of conduit to the gas range for outlets on the island where it sat. Since the range didn’t need electricity, or so we thought, he could use that conduit for island outlets. But he said the Holy Spirit urged him to run another conduit of normal outlet 12 gauge line, just in case. “That was fortunate,” the drolled copy of his father southern twang slowly sounded out.

“We should listen to the Holy Spirit all the time, shouldn’t we?” Ray said. 

“I hear that,” said Carl.

By the time I was back from lunch the repair had been made. The pattern of the Holy Spirit’s fortune upon this crew dates back for almost a decade with these fellas. Just on Monday and Tuesday, though, at least two more such instances have taken place among this holy communion of electricians. 

Emmanuel, an Asian immigrant taken under Ray’s wing, was wiring a bulky ceiling, hanging fan over the range, and pushed with an extra youthful grunt at the large bottom section of the fan, to get the screw firmly in place. The gangly rectangular base of the fan held up to the ceiling on a skinny tubular frame, about 6” by 9” in size. Because of Emmanuel’s effort at the heavy bottom, though, the front two ceiling bolts on the small section hooked at the ceiling came loose, and the entire fan swung backwards, held by the only two bolts left, a hundred pounds of awkward shaped steel and motor tethered only to the ceiling by precarious wonder. 

Fortunately, Ray was standing at the back of the swinging fan and caught it before it ripped completely off the beam above. Before further damage, we reset the fan to its frame, and secured it. I, subsequently, upgraded the ceiling bolts to “overkill” status. Nothing would pry it loose now.

Emmanuel shivered and had gone white over the potential disaster, including his close call at falling off the ladder upon which he stood. I was placed in the perfect position to steady the ladder when it happened, and no harm came to him.

The fortuitous combination of all that took place was simply the Holy Spirit taking care of us, noted Ray. Emmanuel concurred as he calmed down, but he looked over at me wondering if I was going to exercise my right as the owner and contractor and berate him until dinner time. The first thought in my brain, though, as I had been taking Ray’s lead on the constant presence of divine intervention, was to note that the recommended bolting of the fan to the ceiling, which I had done, was totally inadequate. Emmanuel’s timely discovery of the weakness in the bolts couldn’t have taken place at a better time.

“God wanted you to push hard,” I said, almost falling myself into their familiar cadence of Alabama twang. The plodding speed of their speech, by the way, has assisted Emmanuel’s education in English, though the tendency toward mumbling complicates the actual meaning of words. 

I corrected my speech to normal Colorado clarity, due to the confusion in Emmanuel’s face. “I said that God wanted you to push hard, Emmanuel, because you saved the future owner of this kitchen from accidentally pushing on the fan and knocking it off later.” 

“Yes,” Emmanuel said, returning to his normal happy self. “Thank God.”

Late yesterday, Harold and Emmanuel mounted the wall oven and discovered that the opening wasn’t going to be wide enough. After they had wired the unit, they had lifted it into position, and with Ray’s help shoved it into place. But it had gotten stuck.

I got into the act, as we tried to yank it back out. In the process of doing so, Harold grabbed an oven part that wasn’t meant for yanking. It came apart. Due to the weight of the oven, we couldn’t stop, so we proceeded to remove it. I widened the hole, and we reset the oven.

Harold calmly bundled all the miscalculations, heavy lifting, and yanking into one statement. “That’s just how it goes sometimes,” he said, inspecting the dismembered part. “Dang.”

“I suspect John can fix that,” Ray said. “God can help him.”

Harold looked over at me. I hooked myself into the holy communion of trust and smiled at Harold. “God and I can fix it.”

The fortuitous combination of drill bits at my disposal, due to a recent purchase at the hardware store, surprised us all. Two detached oddly designed screws later, and a re-sorting of parts, and the oven was just like new.

“God is good,” Harold said.

My, my, how true all of it is. We don’t imagine that the minute to minute presence of God can make so much difference in a day’s work, until we do. That’s Ray’s preaching right there.

Only when we embark with God’s guidance upon an endeavor that seems impossible, but we know has been handed to us by God, can we properly understand the significance of our lowly selves. Only when we call out to God, whom we sincerely believe is busy with someone else, do we grasp how ready he is to be busy with us.