I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from?”

• Psalm 121:1

He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

• Acts 1:7-8

“Life without vision can be most dull and drab. Each of us must have vision. We must have dreams: vision for a greater and better tomorrow and dreams for a brighter and more glorious future.
“The means of obtaining vision and dreams, is to have a stronger faith, feel a purer love, live a better life, know a greater zeal for God’s work, and be a more· courageous witness for God.
“Nothing must blur this vision; its brightness must never be dimmed nor its focus distorted. Nothing must ever kill our dreams. To be without vision and dreams, is to be dead. And many are the things which will attempt to change our vision, cloud our eyes, fog our minds.
”But with God’s help, our vision will remain eternally bright, our dreams continue to grow. As we find our fellowship in Him, we shall walk safely and surely toward the shining goal.”

• Roy Z. Kemp, Measure for Living

Boilerplate

In this new mini-series, I found an old book of mine in my wife’s things.  I did not know that she had it, but she loved collecting inspirational poems.  She had a knack for skimming over the subject matter that the Sunday school class would discuss.  Then she would thumb through the poetry and devotional books on the shelf and seemingly pick one at random.  Then she would open the book to a seemingly random page and read a prayer or two.  Then she would nod her head and place a bookmark at what she had found.  Then after the Sunday school class had wandered around the subject, going down various rabbit holes along the way, she would end the class with the poem and a short prayer.  And the poem seemed to summarize what we had talked about, even the side trails down rabbit holes.  It fit so perfectly every time.

I do not think she ever quoted this book, but it was a keepsake.  I had never read it.  The inscription in the front of the book states, “It has been a joy to have had you this year.  It has been a friendship I will cherish.”  It was signed by the woman who lived next door to my mother’s mother.  She taught piano and organ.  I took organ lessons.

Do not ask me to play anything on the piano.  I learned by gently gliding over the keys, not by striking them.  And after 55+ years of not practicing, I would be lost after a few bars of Swingin’ Shepherd Blues.

Discussion

We always have dreams of our own.

When I first accepted Jesus, I wanted to become a missionary.  I got a very low lottery number in the military draft.  I had a college deferment, but then they were talking about getting rid of that deferment.  I faced getting drafted if I lost my college deferment.  My parents kept talking about how my Dad’s job was going away.  He had to work as a salesman on commission.  I might have to stop college and go to work to help support the family.  The truth was that my Dad was selling million-dollar pieces of equipment, two or three times each year, with a lot of small sales, and he got a ten percent commission.  He was making annually more than I made the first ten years I was a degreed engineer.  But I thought we were broke.

So, I accepted an ROTC scholarship so that I could stay in school until I got my degree.

Then, they pulled the last troops out of Vietnam less than a month before I graduated.  I think it was roughly a week before.  They did not need me on active duty, so they encouraged me to take a graduate school deferment.

In those two and a half years, I received a master’s degree, got married, and my wife had our first child.  On the day of graduation from graduate school, I got my orders to report to Germany.  Four years later, we were moving from Watertown, MA to North Augusta, SC where we lived for nearly ten years with our two children, the other born in Heidelberg, West Germany.

My job, as well as thousands of others, was in jeopardy, and I got a job in northern Mississippi on a NASA project “guaranteed” to last twenty-five years but lasted three years.

I say all this to say that for the first half of my working life, I went where I had to go to find employment – no real vision at all.  I was frustrated.  My wife was frustrated.  And our children never understood why.

Even moving to SW Pennsylvania, it was the only job offer I got when our contract in Washington state ended.  I tried to find a better job.  The jobs may have been better, but they offered monstrous pay cuts and no moving reimbursements.  So, I stayed until my company of roughly twenty years laid me off.

My entire working career was getting a punch in the gut and then reinventing myself.  Who starts off as a computer modeling engineer in a chemical plant?  Then a construction engineer in the Army, followed by a Facilities Management Engineer.  Then everything you could imagine at a nuclear facility (construction, maintenance, contract management, environmental, instructional design, what am I forgetting).  Then Training Director at a NASA project, then an auditor of training at another nuclear site, and then a teacher of furnace operations for steel and aluminum industries.  Then after being laid off, back to being a safety and construction engineer, almost full circle.

I am not bitter.  For, upon not finding a job in my 60s, I started back into writing, a love I had since middle school.

And what accompanied the writing was a Vision.  I have written and published over 4600 posts on this site.  I have a weekly pattern to the writing, although my Monday morning Bible Studies in the Psalms is every other week.  I have mini-series that I enjoy writing.  I love writing my Saturday morning Bible Quizzes.  And I have gotten back into short story writing.

Is what I write high quality?  That is for others to decide.  But it pours forth from my vision to spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth.  I hope to go past 200 countries, territories, and other entities before the end of this year.  I am getting close, but new countries do not show up every month.

I found my Voice.  I found my Vision.

Praise the Lord!

Closing Prayer

“I’m filled with doubt, uncertainty,
My heart is filled with dread
Whenever I can’t know or see
The road which lies ahead.

But joy possesses heart and mind
And takes away the pain
When vision comes and I can find
The goal I must attain.”

• Roy Z. Kemp, Measure for Living (When Vision Comes)

“Father, guide me.  Help me feel the poetry.  I might not have enjoyed my journey through life as much as I should, but I always found something to be joyful in doing with each new job.  And the wide diversity of careers as I reinvented myself, with Your help, I have gotten a lot of things that I enjoy writing about.  And I cannot wait for what You next have in store.  For the first time, my eyes are open to the next curtain that is drawn.  Hallelujah!  In Thy Name I pray.
“Amen”

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.