It’s obvious – if you have eyes to see.

But it’s easy to be oblivious, frustrated—terse even.

Kev had bought a diesel heater off me 2 years ago—a cheap one—and his happened to be one of the 5% that failed. He was an old retired farmer, living in the hills but recently had bought a house around the corner from us. Something about his wife having cancer and proximity to hospital etc. And that was the tone in which I processed this information. It was simply that—a piece of data.

He called a few weeks back to tell me the heater had failed again. He was a bit annoyed and wanted me to do a house call to repair it. I felt bad for him. He must have scored a real dud heater… Rare, but they do happen. His caravan was parked on the grass at the front of his house, low to the ground and it was inevitably gonna mean getting wet and dirty. 

When I dropped in the first day he wasn’t there, when we scheduled an appointment he had to cancel at the last minute. I was feeling a bit irked myself. It’ll probably end up being some simple user error I thought to myself… 

The cancellation actually worked to my advantage as I was able to shift a couple of jobs around and take off for a surf early this morning at one of my favourite haunts. He called me as I was coming home and I agreed to meet him at 3.30 to sort it out. My mood had lifted from being in the water so I was in the right frame of mind for what I had somehow convinced myself was going to be an annoying job.

We arrived and I tested the heater. Definitely not working. The pump was operating so I went underneath to see if it was pumping fuel. Nope.

Faulty pump? Nope.

Fuel filter? Maybe…

We walked to the fuel filter right next to the fuel tank. The tank looked dirty. ‘Dirty diesel?’ I had heard of this, so I opened it to take a look inside. 

“I’ve found the problem Kev,” I called.

“Oh—what is it?”

“There’s no fuel. Not a drop in here.” I’d spent half an hour rolling around under this van chasing my tail when all the time Kev had just forgotten to fill her up. I thought some deprecating things in my head, but said nothing. I could see he was embarrassed and to be fair the dark stain on the fuel tank made it look like it was half full.

Kev tipped some diesel in while I scampered back under to get the fuel lines reconnected. Then ‘boom’—we were up and running.

At this point I’m musing somewhere between “well this was a complete waste of time”, to “how do I charge for this?!” 

As the heater got wound up we got chatting. Kev was looking to buy a new car—a Ranger—so we talked cars. I asked him how his wife was, recalling a piece of data from a previous conversation. 

“She died just 6 months ago. It was terrible.” he said. “I’ve never felt so lost.”

In a moment the “data” about his wife morphed instantly into the stuff of human connection and I realised I was talking to a man who was quite broken and floundering after this tragic loss. 

Two years ago I probably would have offered a sympathetic nod before steering the conversation back to cars. Losing Sam has changed something in me. I found myself asking another question… then another.

For an 80 year old cocky, Kev was quite open about his struggle to find joy in life since his wife’s passing. I shared some of my own journey with grief and loss—the overwhelming sense of bewilderment that comes when your world gets up-ended. 

As two blokes we stood chatting for half an hour or so about life after loss and how we were coping. The heater roared on in the background, forgotten by both of us for a time. 

I ended up calling it to a close as I needed to get going. I walked him through the heater instructions one more time—and cheekily reminded him of the importance of diesel for the ‘diesel heater’ to operate.

“Do I owe you anything for today?” he asked.

I think we both knew the answer to that. It had moved from being a faulty piece of machinery, to an embarrassing error and then to a rich conversation about life after loss. Somehow charging for any of it seemed somewhat mercenary and unnecessary.

——-

As I keep focusing on how we live as the people of God in the workplace I will keep sharing stories like these. They aren’t grandiose and impressive—just quiet moments that may go unnoticed or opportunities for connection that may go untaken—unless we carry the awareness of both the Spirit of God and the voice of the person we are interacting with. 

Work has a funny way of reducing people to problems to solve. A broken heater. A difficult customer. A wasted afternoon. I know there would have been a time when I would have seen Kev as a silly old man who wasted my time. Today I looked in the eyes of a man who was staggering his way through life, getting battered by grief each day and who just needed a break—someone to see him and listen.

To be honest I hesitate to share this stuff because it can look like grandstanding. Trust me. It’s not. I just want people to have some real life examples of how we can live faith and love people genuinely in our various work environments. 

What’s it like now—over 2 years on from Sam’s death?

Today we are 2 years 3 months and a bunch of days away from the day it all happened. So there is nothing significant about this particular day. 

It’s just one of many that have passed and I have been aware of a gradual shift in how I perceive things and respond. 

There are moments when the reality of our loss runs thru my entire being like a high voltage spike and everything in me feels like it is about to explode. These moments don’t last long at all – maybe 2-3 seconds or thereabouts. 

It’s like my brain then yells, ‘unfixable – move on!’ I realise that’s sharp and blunt, but it feels like that. I can enjoy memories of Sam as they appear from time to time, but anything that catapults me back to March 24 has my heart and mind light up like a pinball machine, shortly before ‘tilt’ appears and the whole experience quickly shorts out.

I get the sense that because I can’t do anything to fix things, or restore him it is easier to think about something else. And it seems that is what happens. I touch the hotplate only to withdraw my hand and then distract myself with something else. 

I don’t know if that is healthy or unhealthy, but it seems to be my practice.

There are times I choose to sit in the sheer darkness of it and to remember the loss, but that really does feel like pulling out your own hair. I don’t want to avoid the horror, but neither do I want to sit in pain that I simply can’t do anything about.

‘Missing him’ is a little different too. There is still the simple missing him from our family – knowing we are one short every time we go somewhere and his presence was always large and loud. There is the missing who he would be now – a qualified physiotherapist, possibly married… so many possibilities that we will never see eventuate. 

I shared some of our journey through this at a men’s camp a couple of weekends back. I hadn’t spoken about him much in that kind of space, so while it ‘went well’, in the sense that it connected, I was very aware of a ‘grief hangover’ the next day. 

If I have learnt anything over this time (and there has been more than one thing), it’s that everyone is carrying something – or going thru some kind of pain – and if they aren’t yet, then it will come. It’s just how life is. And we need ways of processing intense, deep, searing pain. We need to learn how to enter these times with both courage and hope – because these are the marks of a Jesus follower.

Perhaps this is the biggest thing grief has changed in me. I no longer assume suffering belongs to other people. I know now that every one of us lives much closer to catastrophe than we’d like to admit.

Just a few days ago I heard that a surfer/pastor friend, Andy Pitt had died from motor neurone disease. Having watched a brother in law battle this for 9 years, Andy’s 9 months felt incredibly fast. I consciously said ‘goodbye’ to him at the Christian Surfers national gathering in April and it was deeply sad. He was going fast, so it was no surprise to hear the news last week. And yet again, such a good man gone too soon and another family forced into the contortions of grief. 

As I spoke with him during the camp, we discussed the question, ‘why me?’ It was a question people had posed to Andy – why you? It wasn’t a question he posed himself so much, in fact his response to that question was ‘why not me?’ That might sound harsh, but Andy was really acknowledging that in a broken world we are all fair game – no matter how connected to God we are, there are no guarantees – none whatsoever. And as I observed his journey from afar and heard stories from those who were close to him, it seems Andy faced death with all the sadness and sorrow you would expect, but also with the hope and courage that comes from a deep knowledge of who God is and what is to come.

Sam loved Andy ‘Putt’ as he called him, often imitating his Saffa accent. So while I am unsure of exactly ‘what happens next’, I imagine there could be a few laughs happening in ‘heaven’ if they manage to catch up.

It sounds kind of depressing to say ‘if you don’t have pain or suffering yet – don’t worry you will.’ But it’s also reality and it’s worth being prepared. Your son may die, your dad may get MND, your marriage may fail or your business may go bankrupt… But the reality is that pain is coming your way. The other reality is that it doesn’t have to take you out.

I haven’t intentionally formed any strategies for dealing with grief. I have just tried to be myself at each point of the journey and allow it to do whatever it’s going to do – much like getting ragdolled by a massive wave. 

But even in surviving that kind of flogging there is some preparation – the physical and mental training to be able to absorb the hits and rise to the surface again. For me that has taken the form of simply living close to Jesus for long enough that I know a) this isn’t his doing b) he walks with me in the darkness and I will survive. And while it wasn’t conscious preparation for this exact experience – it was just the stuff that was needed to hold fast in the face of the storm.

So, you can take the worst that is thrown at you and you can stand strong during the assault, but it starts by being ready. Being ‘ready’ acknowledges that we are all part of a broken world but it also means we do what we can to become the sort of people who, when suffering arrives, have deep enough roots to remain standing.

Even if you’ve prepared, you’re still never quite ready for actual impact. We have this inbuilt hope and expectation that we will dodge the bullets of life – that we will be the exceptions – so it inevitably catches us off-guard. 

You won’t be the exception.

Consider this your ‘heads up’ that life is coming for you in some shape or form, so be ready, but also be courageous and be hopeful.

Imagine you are experiencing some kind of demonic activity in your life – you are having terrible evil dreams or constant suicidal thoughts and you seem to have no control over these things. They harrass you often and are destroying your life.

Now imagine you go to see your pastor and he says ‘ah – it’s probably an evil spirit from the Lord.’ My hunch is you’d be on the search for another pastor. There is no Christian in their right mind believes a good father would treat his child in this way and no pastor with even a hint of theological education who would offer this as an explanation.

So what then of 1 Samuel 16 where the Spirit of the Lord has left Saul and the narrator says: ‘an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.’

An evil spirit from the Lord.

It’s there in black and white. What do you do with this statement? Verses 15 and 23 re-state this same idea – that God is sending a spirit to harass Saul.

Really?

Is this how God treats his kids who have messed up? I don’t think so. Assuming, as Colossians says, that Jesus is the perfect representation of God, then it’s hard to imagine him ever doing this. The prodigal son doesn’t get treated this way. Why should Saul?

I’m sure we all have learnt ways of resolving this tension. Scripture is telling us that God is doing something out of line with his character. Some will resolve it in such a way as to make it ‘true’ – God did this – but it was a special occasion or for a certain one-off reason. Others will reject the statement and find another way to hold the integrity of scripture.

I’m curious as to how others have resolved this so I will hold off on offering my thinking – so feel free to explain to me your way of understanding. I’d like to hear.

Do you have a career or a calling?

Perhaps both?

Does it matter?… Maybe it doesn’t matter to you, but if you do have a genuine sense of calling then you will know that it matters a lot.

What do we mean by each?

Career – is usually a word used to describe the long arc of your working life. It is also a source of employment that has clear opportunities for advancement and increased remuneration. More than likely it will be an area you enjoy, are skilled in and have trained or prepared for with education.

Calling – a deep sense of why you are on the earth and what you have been created for. Your calling transcends a career or a job and follows you wherever you go and whatever you do.

They are very different things – and yes – you can have both.

If you have followed this blog for a while then you will likely have heard me express my sense of vocation. It’s right there in the title of the blog – “backyard missionary” – that’s it. Super simple. Those words describe who I am and who I aspire to be. More specifically, I mean that God has called me / created me to be a person who communicates his love and the good news of the Christian story to the people I live amongst.

And ‘backyard’ is distinct from overseas, or cross cultural mission. I had originally thought my calling was to an overseas country, but as time has gone on I have realised my deep love for this country and these people – both the ones in my literal backyard / street and others around the country who I connect with.

As a contrast – but also equally a calling, Danelle has felt an enormous sense of calling in this life is to be a mum – and she ‘mum’s her way through all kinds of spaces very well.

So you may ask, why I am fitting diesel heaters and weighing caravans if my calling is to be a backyard missionary? Simple. I need to pay the bills, (‘If a person doesn’t work then neither should he eat – 2 Thess 3:10) I’m good at this stuff and it allows me to both serve in my work, while also having plenty of free time to be engaged in my local community. I could be a full time pastor- but then I’d be head down—bum up in church world for 95% of my days. 

If you are called to lead churches and pastor people then that’s the perfect place for you to be. But if your calling involves connecting with people who not part of our churches then it makes sense to have a job that allows that to happen as fully as possible. Running my own business means I have the autonomy and flexibility to take on work, or reject it as fits my calling. Right now I am working hard because this is ‘busy season’ for us—and in that my calling is expressed in the workplace by choosing to serve people in such a way that truly cares and looks after them.

Come summer I will be much freer to walk the dog for longer and chat with the other ‘dog-walkers’ I now know. I will have more time to hang at the beach with the boys and maybe join the e-foiling crew. I will also have more time just to stop and chat in general. And it’s in these spaces that my calling gets lived out.

I began life as a phys ed teacher and as a young ambitious man I guessed that was going to be my career and I was going to set the teaching world on fire, (for Jesus of course). Then came the sense of calling to mission and ministry – a distinct sense that God was putting his finger on me for a different purpose. I entered youth ministry with ‘career thinking’ and set my sights on becoming a top notch youth pastor – with the idea that eventually I would become a senior pastor and lead a large church. That is ‘career thinking’ and it doesn’t always mesh well with Christian mission and ministry – even though we sometimes talk about ‘career missionaries’ (people who have spent their lives in one project). 

I feel like I am still coming to grips with the nuances of my calling – even at 62 years old. I know it isn’t to move back into full time permanent church leadership – although I could do some of what those roles require. But it jars with the part of me that needs to live local, be present and connected. There are only so many hours in a day and I have discovered that I am far more alive when I get to spend a significant amount of time in ordinary life, rather than being busy with church life.

So I would think that I haven’t had a ‘career’ as such for many years now. I have hopped from business to business as new ideas have surfaced, but always with the view of the business serving the greater calling. I doubt I will ever pursue a career of any sort any more. Age aside, it just doesn’t inspire me the way it did in my youth.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing though. I would argue that we need people living and operating from their calling first. If the calling leads to a career then woohoo for you – that’s a win. But the calling may take you away from a ‘career driven’ type of life, to a less impressive version of yourself that would still be truly you – in fact maybe more truly you.

So if you’re 17 and just starting out you will be guided to think ‘career’. It’s inevitable. Vocational decisions made in teen years (ironically ‘vocation’ = ‘calling’) are always geared towards a career path. Your task is far more grand that advancing through the ranks of an organisation over a period of years and eventually becoming a CEO or manager. Your job is to discern who you are – who God has made you to be and what things he has called you to do.

So hear me well. A career isn’t bad. I’m not at all against professional development, but the first priority ought to be that of calling. There is no more important question to answer:

Who has God called me to be and what has he called me to do in this world?