Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Thank you, shuttle man.

The man at the shuttle service at Glacier National Park greeted us with a robust voice and immediately ushered us into… an experience. 

With sincere enthusiasm, he asked my husband where we needed to go.  Then he said, with five-star quality, Please, allow me to escort you to my executive waiting room. 

The waiting room was two wooden benches by the sidewalk. 

But the man’s demeanor caused us to say, It’s like we’re at Disneyland! 

As we boarded the shuttle the man encouraged us to get the very best out of our day in the park, as he had been doing as an employee there for over two decades. 

I’m tempted to carry around a box of star stickers, to slap on the chest of anyone I meet who takes ho-hum and crafts it into something spectacular.  Surely the opening of my tin box and the presentation of a star sticker would be of equal value to the presentations on the Olympic medal stand. 

The shuttle man would get a star for sure. 

God also turned ho-hum into an experience. 

He took formless and empty, rather drab raw materials if you ask me, and formed them into light and color and and life.  Then he stood back and “saw that it was good”.  (Genesis 1:25  NIV) 

“Good” seems a modest description, but then the artist must have a humility about His own work, I suppose. 

That’s what I want to be able to say when I stand back and look at the tasks I’m doing.  I want to be able to say, This is good.  And when God stands up close behind me to check out what I’ve done, I want Him to say, Mmmhhhmm.  Mmmmhhmm.  Yes.  This is good. 

I want to be like the shuttle man.  When people brush up against what I’m doing I want them to get that Disneyland, over-the-top, come-step-into-an-experience kind of feeling. 

Some days the work is just cleaning toilets and making dinner and providing taxi service to a teenager.  But still.  I could add a bit of the Creator’s flare to the ho-hum.  Besides, it’s rarely the task itself that is spectacular, rather the attitude and energy and creativity I bring to it. 

What’s your work?  When you step back and look at it is it good?  (Get-a-star good?)

I might just go buy me some star stickers this very day.

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