Even though Roy faithfully attended church every Sunday … I can’t picture him dressed up. If I close my eyes, I see him in bib overalls. He was an electrician by trade, but a servant at heart. Before we left Illinois, I think he was at the church as much as I was. If you found a ladder stuck in some hole in the ceiling, that’s where Roy was … using his trade in retirement to support God’s work.
At a church camp work party, I was helping clean up around a new building. I had collected a handful of scrap electrical wire and saw an empty piece of conduit sticking through the wall. So, I folded the wires, shoved them in the pipe and forgot about it. At church a month later, I got slugged in the arm. It was Roy. He had worried over those wires, studied the plans and asked others at the job site about them. About the time Roy was totally perplexed, the wires fell out in his hand. I think he called me a “rotten stinker,” but somehow that cemented our friendship.
Roy’s glasses were unlike any I’d ever seen. They were trifocals with one band of magnification right across the top. I was going to ask about their purpose, but my own aging process explained. I was installing some overhead lighting and had just tightened a retaining screw down on the neutral wire. I let go, expecting the wire to hold the fixture in place … instead it went crashing to the floor. I had totally missed the hole and tightened the screw down on thin air. Then it dawned on me why Roy needed magnifiers at the top of his lenses. As an electrician, he had spent more time than most looking up.
Most of us focus on what’s close at hand and look a little into the future but remain quite myopic about what’s above us. The book of Revelation is a magnifier right across the top of my spiritual vision. It helps me look up and glimpse the glories that await those who trust in Christ. It reminds me that someday soon, Jesus will come again in glory. It reminds me, as Jesus said, to “stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Luke 21:28.
