follow the cloud - of work and church

-->

Brief outline of some of the ways God has led me in the workplace  -  loosely in chronological order. 

Many more mini stories in here i can't tell of course –-(I jump ahead to working in the catholic school as I write that  – stories of working with secondary kids and the many blessings and learnings of all that for me as well   - could probably draw some good vignettes of that  -  but I won’t go there in detail – except to say I was grateful for the years there - i grew as much as they i think.)

Anyway – back to more linear order– I bounced round uni for a while, without much focus and in an increasing state of disrepair or despair along lonely paths – yet searching out and entering into blessing of faith along the way –   being called in from those fragmenting places to God's wisdom and way is another way of saying that – or saying the same thing from another angle - and I gradually started bouncing round less. More to be said there, but that will do in outline.  (this hints at some more)

And then started work at a hi-tech manufacturer – fell on my feet with a holiday job that got extended ; R&D in spectrophotometry ; working with some brilliant people, and seeing the reality of a multidisciplinary team tackling really tricky issues. Work morphed a few times –all jobs do, I find – and was blessed to be assigned to the most talented engineer in to the place – crazy and disorganized but brilliant.  The intractable deal breaking problem on the new project -  that had already taken 100+ person years -  had ended up with him, and I was his offsider while we chased it down – great job and l loved that too. 

Then moved to an analytical lab, on the basis of that background expertise with these devices. Was less interesting and more routine just driving the things – but i think taught me how to stand under various pressures; dealing with endless short term and complex deadlines etc; and building faith.  A word flashed into me at the time – I have made you a tester of metals (Jer 6:27) and that is what these things did -  dissolved materials in acid and sprayed into a plasma as hot as the surface of the sun, and read the spectral lines – revealing the trace impurities that the eye couldn’t see - how much arsenic in the water or lead in the soil.  There were many rich ways of God speaking to me at work at the time; on a particular wavelength as it were, as though  i were an atom and he the massive Sun - yet could pick out just the right spectral frequency to reach me. 

Also programmed up systems in the midnight hours to solve the lack of a streamlined paperwork system - taught myself on the way and felt a leading around that as well.

Church was going  deep for me at the time – God doing some really intense things around that time. Some of the events still stand out – things permanently changed there.   But its also true I was also damaged goods after my path – most of us are, i suppose, takes a lot to disciple us I guess.  I was learning how to hear God, in intimacy. It felt like the infinite power and goodness of God was meeting the infinite fractal mess of my soul  - and it took a while to get some basic things straightened out. Constantly surprised with His goodness, against the legalistic edge I would project onto Him and myself. 

Made some errors amid this too, of my own making - but the forgiveness  of the new day, which was vouchsafed, means its not useful to discuss here either. 

I used to pray at lunch time – often walking up from the lab to a  Catholic church at the end of the street.  Walking up there one day, had a strong sense God was going to speak to me.; there was a satellite dish nearby which often spoke to me of that capacity, and the air felt pregnant with something pending. 

As I knelt to pray found my mind running over a whole lot of the essays I’d written at school  - sort of unearthed in my recollection – and I realized God had been guiding* me -had been present in some of those creative reflections and principles as I’d written  – even though I wasn’t a Christian at the time . And I walked out of that lunch hour with a strong sense of being called to teach, to bless, indeed to teach English  - not just the chem and physics  etc which would be the  obvious things. I’d always found it hard to narrow down to one subject like you were meant to – liked history and philosophy of science as much as science itself, maybe more so, so it seemed viable. 

* I mistyped that as 'guilding me'- and He was doing that too – giving a guild –that sort of mistype and multiple meaning was one thing I learnt to attend to back then - sometimes a prophetic puzzle would be tied around the double meaning.

Anyway, that one lunch time event was enough, really, to get me changing career.  So a Dip Ed and English sub major while still tinkering with lab software,

Not easy to start with, given I wasn’t sure I was fluent enough to teach; but God had other ideas.  

So a bit up and down for year or two as i got into it, but then took off  and things accelerated in various ways.

Gradual building up over the next half a dozen years to places and leadership roles i wouldn't have seen at the start, probably.  

I had a sheaf of promises and journal notes I used to read at the time

In one of those notes I’d seen a picture of my life like a tree – at the boundary of field – an edge marker onto several domains – and  my pathway  – linking science, IT, English, teaching, church, leadership, was beginning to feel like that.  

Coming closer to present – having moved towns - another good story there - and into state education system – was working across a handful of schools on various  programs – another raft of cool stories of guidance and  provision here – and more learning under difficult pressure as well – but I won’t attempt to go there either right now   – and then back to relatively normal teaching a few years after that.   Getting involved in church leadership in this season is another complex and challenging story too.

Anyway I had a student ask about a maths program.    I was open to whatever the year 8s thought would help them, so I looked into it and arranged a demo from the company. 

My wife had a sense the morning that the demo was arranged  – without knowing any of this – that it might be time to get out of teaching – and today might bring the opportunity. That got my attention, even though i hadn't been seeking that sort of change. just then. 

I noticed indeed the demo  did seem to use the same approaches I’d used in making things in the midnight hours – I had kept making things and learning IT on the side -  and her word made me decide to push a bit more - so I showed some of what i had done as well. End result, to cut that short, I’m working with them now, even though i hadn't been looking or feeling particularly like i should change. 

One point I want to mention in this outline – i realised later that the Catholic church I used to pray at during those lunch hours in the  lab, where I had felt the initial guidance into teaching  –  echoed or prefigured the Catholic school I ended up working in.  Indeed our penty church unexpectedly ended up hiring the hall  in that very church complex – before moving their services into the gym of yet another Catholic school.

 Here’s the thing about that – and about corporate and individual guidance.  I’m sure that my protestant/penty church  had good reasons for both of those moves into Catholic facilities, which had nothing whatever to do  with my career or calling in Catholic schools. Yet in the providence of God, he can also use those connections to spell out and provide meanings for individuals – He is God after all. So there were echoes and meanings for me in us being in those locations.  

(Incidentally I had all of the protestant issues one might have  - working out how to deal with the religious agenda – and learning  wider ways to bless as well - more stories here -  but God was calling me that way).

 For a parallel to this principle of guidance being given to all and also personalised to individuals at the same time, consider Israel following Him in the desert – seeing the cloud by day and fire by night. My daughter imagined an elephant head in the clouds yesterday, another child would have seen something else - maybe one child really sees eagles in the divine cloud of His presence, which guides the tribe en masse, while another sees a Lion; yet all are guided to the days location.  Or maybe he turned the face of the Eagle to one; Ox to another, as in Ezekiel's vision – while still being One.

That’s what I wanted to say, really – he can imbue multiple meanings into one moment; one incident can stand at the intersection or culmination of many things. God is like that – everything Jesus did fulfilled multiple prophecies in multiple ways – and we can't record all that he did. So with the ways of God – there's a richness that cannot be fully traced out when God guides and leads and moves - every day of this life since those beginnings  i could have added a record, probably, of what was happening at the time in terms of guidance and goodness.  

So a tentative bottom line; the cloud of His presence guides all corporately, and personally - church locations and a whole sheaf of work stories  - much more than i can document - all intersect in Him.