SURVIVING TOUGH TIMES

SURVIVING TOUGH TIMES

Following my freshman year at Yale, I returned home to Pennsylvania for summer employment.  I was ecstatic because I had a wonderful job lined up in the Quality Control Laboratory of Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel.  If you are aware of the steel industry, you know that I was blessed beyond measure to have snagged this high tech and safe position.  Inside steel mills, there are scores of undesirable places to work, from the roaring blast furnaces where steel is made to a myriad of hot, dry and dirty places.  Typically, new-kids-on-the-block are afforded the ‘golden opportunity’ to work in the most unpleasant places, due to their lack of seniority.

However, largely because of favor due to my father’s reputation and influence, I was assigned to something significantly better.  By rights, I should have been outdoors dealing with the lowest dregs of that hot and hostile industrial environment, but I was placed as a trainee technician inside an air-conditioned lab.  Indeed, I was highly favored and blessed!

My high school buddy and co-worker was the son of the superintendent of schools.  Throughout the months of June and July, Sherman and I prepared samples of raw materials (used to make steel) for spectrometer analysis.  How happy and carefree we were – to bypass the risk and rigor of working in the labor gang – close but far away from the streams of molten steel, the moving vessels containing fiery liquid slag and those terribly loud and torrid furnaces.

While we were infinitely blessed to work in the Q. C. Lab under the name and influence of our fathers, Sherman and I had no way of knowing that ‘hostile takeover forces’ were lurking unseen in the shadows.  During that incredibly hot July, two men with greater seniority spied our cushy and comfortable working conditions and decided to submit bids for our jobs.  One particularly hot day in the last week of July, the labor gang foreman appeared at the door of the Q.C. Lab.  He summoned us by name, ordered us to gather our personal effects and told us to meet him near Blast Furnace Number Three in ten minutes.

My co-worker and I spoke up at the same time and in almost the same words: “But sir, we work in the Quality Control Lab!”  In my mind’s eye, I can see that foreman standing there with a stern look on his face.  “Not anymore!” he pronounced firmly.  “You guys have been BUMPED by other men with more seniority.  Now get moving FAST if you still want to work here!”  I was just eighteen years old at the time, but it seems like yesterday.  Our hearts sank as we sucked in our last moments of air-conditioning, gathered our hardhats, goggles and steel-tipped safety boots and headed for the blast furnace, having been (in our minds at least) BUMPED BY THE DEVIL!

When we arrived at that smoke-filled and fiery site, Sherman and I had a rude awakening.  For seven weeks, we had enjoyed the cool, calm and safe environment of the laboratory.  Now we listened in a daze as the foreman called off various manual labor jobs, none of which were familiar to us.  Even other college students who had by this time worked for two months in the labor gang had more seniority than us!  Worse yet, we were assigned to do repair work in a terrible place: THE SOAKING PITS, where huge ingots of red-hot steel were fired and tempered.

During normal operations, those pits reached temperatures up to 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  Now in repair mode, the pits had been ‘cooled down’ to 140 degrees (60o Centigrade).  You cannot imagine how hot that air felt on our skin and in our lungs – it was burning up in there!  Our job was to work inside (for 20-25 minutes at a time, the maximum one could safely endure) and to remove hardened impurities from the firebrick lining the pit, using a 75-pound (40 kilo) jack hammer.  When it is that HOT, on top of the 90 degree [32 Centigrade] summer heat, perspiration evaporates immediately, lips and nasal passages dry out and it is extremely difficult to breathe.  Those harsh experiences in the soaking pits were my personal confirmation that HELL MUST BE AVOIDED AT ANY COSTS!

Nevertheless, the scriptures teach us that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)  Sherman and I were both Christians, and though we definitely despised our new working environment, there were vital character lessons to be gained in that oppressive place.  First of all, we learned how to PERSEVERE, i.e. how not to quit when confronted with adverse circumstances.  Secondly, we learned to be truly GRATEFUL for those earlier days of situational favor – the comfort and convenience that might not (and did not) abide forever.  Thirdly, we learned that COLLEGE EDUCATION DID NOT MAKE US BETTER than others; neither did it make us more powerful or productive.  Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, we learned all-important lessons of HUMILITY.  Humility teaches us how to survive at the bottom, while mobilizing us to rise and to remain at the top in our appointed season.  Lastly, we learned how to maintain a GOOD ATTITUDE and to discover random reasons for laughter, even in a ‘pit’ environment.

To be sure, Sherman and I hated our time in the pit, but we garnered strategic life lessons that guide and serve today.  In closing, I would be absolutely naïve and insensitive to assume that my short-term work challenges can somehow be equated with the gargantuan struggles that many experience on a daily basis.  Sherman and I had JOBS, reliable and gainful employment, while so many do not.  Many among us struggle in silence, just to survive and to secure the basic necessities of life: food, clean water, shelter, clothing, etc.  I am painfully aware of the realities of daily struggle in the lives of multiplied millions around the globe.

Nevertheless, the practical life lessons gleaned from this personal experience one summer decades ago are these: 1) YOU WILL MAKE IT through tough times because GOD (Jehovah-Shammah) IS THERE with you; 2) YOU WILL SECURE AND SUSTAIN PEACE IN THE MIDST OF TRYING TIMES – if you hold onto your smile, your laughter, your hope and your dream; 3) YOU CAN ALWAYS TALK TO GOD, in any situation and at any time.  In fact, you can tell HIM any and every thing; 4) TROUBLE WILL NOT LAST ALWAYS.  Robert Schuller said it this way: “Tough times don’t last…tough people do!”

Prayerfully consider the life lessons listed above and listen attentively (with your spirit) to these very encouraging COVENANT PROMISES:

Psalm 27:13-14 (NKJV)
13 I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
14 WAIT ON THE LORD; BE OF GOOD COURAGE, AND HE SHALL STRENGTHEN YOUR HEART; wait, I say, on the Lord!

Isaiah 40:28-31 (NKJV)
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength.
30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall,
31 BUT THOSE WHO WAIT ON THE LORD SHALL RENEW THEIR STRENGTH; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

My friend, be encouraged to continue and to move forward – whoever, whatever, whenever, wherever, or however you may be.  GOD HAS NOT FORGOTTEN ABOUT YOU.  HE SEES. HE KNOWS. HE CARES; and HE HAS THE POWER TO TOTALLY TRANSFORM YOUR SITUATION.  TRUST HIM.  STAY POSITIVE.  STAY FOCUSED.  HANG IN THERE!

Sisters and brothers, be continually blessed, and please (above all else) MAKE SURE YOU ARE READY TO MEET OUR SOON COMING KING. Maranatha!