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.