“A Good Machinist is a Good Mechanic” Part One

The path of life winds through time, exposing each of us to many different people who are each on their own journey.

Sometimes, crossing paths with people is a very brief affair, such as bumping carts in a grocery store or sitting next to a stranger at a ballgame. Sometimes our paths cross and linger with people for a few years, as is the case with coworkers. And sometimes, those coworkers actually drop nuggets of wisdom on us which last the rest of our lives.

Con Kelly was a man like that. He looked like Yosemite Sam and had just as much wild energy. He hired in as a machinist in the shop where I worked, and he always had a goofy grin in his face, like he just flushed a cherry bomb down the toilet and was just waiting for it to go off. In other words, he was 50 years old, with the youthful exuberance of a teenager…a bit of a wild man, but I liked him.

I never thought that he would offer much in the way of wisdom to me, but one day he surprised me. I was working on my lathe, setting the gears up to cut a specific size thread on some metal rods, when he walked up and stood watching.

“What’s up, Con?” I watched his grinning mouth under that big orange mustache, his eyes watching close as I adjusted knobs and turned wrenches.

“You know, a good machinist is a good mechanic,” he said, “You’re a good mechanic.”

I was slightly puzzled, but what Con said that day was very poignant and would benefit me years later in ministry. I will share the spiritual application tomorrow. But can I encourage you to remember that even the unsaved have valuable wisdom which you can apply to life?

May our ears remain open to wise council and wisdom today!