Firetrucks and Faith
My granddad was a fire chief in Virginia, and as a result I’ve always loved firefighters. At the first church I served I had 4 students that were explorer fire fighters. At any given time during youth group I’d hear the radios go off and they would sprint out of the doors yelling back “Sorry!”.
This image caught my eye on Facebook the other day. The Ford page posted about a concept vehicle that was “pushed into service” by tornadoes in Texas. Ford showed this F-550 concept firetruck in Houston:
According to the article, most concept vehicles rarely see outside the showroom floor. Most concepts aren’t even fully functionally. This truck had 2 miles on it when it was called upon to actually go to work. After it was finished it was cleaned up and continued on the showroom circuit, (“Ford rescue concept truck pressed into service to help tornado victims“).
Looking through the comments from fans of the article numerous people wanted them to leave the truck covered in mud and ash. They said that it would be a fitting tribute to what this truck was capable of doing and to the people behind the concept.
As I thought about that I began to wonder about what our (Christian) Sunday morning worship services convey. Do people look at us and think, “That’s a great looking group of people, it’s nice that they get out of bed and get dressed up on Sunday, but can they do anything?” Do they see showroom quality Christians that “aren’t fully functional” or do they see us motivated by the Spirit and “pushed into service”. The list price on this truck is $150,000. But if it just sits in a showroom it isn’t worth anything.
There are times in our faith journey when God calls us to do something at that very moment and we have to choose what we will do.
Matt told me once, “If God is telling you to do something and you ignore it, it’s going to bother you.” Immediately I thought, “How long will it bother me? How long will God wait for me to respond? How long do I have to do something? What happens if I don’t do anything?”
When he calls will we respond to him or roll over and go back to sleep? Will our faith be one that does good?
The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel! ”
Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
Hank's 