Olive Crest United Methodist Church
7180 North 60th Street
Omaha, Nebraska 68152

Our Pastor

Rev. Debra Tompsett-Welch

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The Spiritual Life

June 2004

When the Job is just too big; or how to do the impossible!

By Rev. Michael Lee Burgess

I am standing 20 feet above the concrete drive way. I am moving very very slowly with smooth controlled movements because if you jerk or swing your paintbrush too hard the scaffolding sways and that makes my hand sweat and it is hard to hold onto the brush. Now 20 feet up from the concrete driveway doesn't sound all that high when I say it, but it is two and a half stories high and means that if I stretch up on my toes I can reach the edge of the board that runs along the side of the roof tiles of mom and dad's house in Elkhorn. We needed to paint the house so we can try and sell it and get things going again at Turtle Manor. (Mom and dad's house across from the church. We call it The Burgess Turtle Manor on the Moor. Turtle because it is taking so long and Moor for how much rainwater flows through the back yard.) So since I can't afford to hire someone to paint it, I rented scaffolding and some friends and I are up on this scaffolding trying to paint way above my head. I don't know what it is about being up on that scaffolding, but its lots hotter up there than down on the ground. We aren't that much closer to the sun, but the sweat is dripping off me so fast it is diluting the paint. My hands are sweating so much it is hard to hold onto the scaffolding bars going up and down. It doesn't seem to bother Kurt Lambrecht or Deb Merriweather very much. But it is really hard for me to climb up there and stand perfectly still while painting. I never used to be afraid of heights, but it seems I am now. But still it needs to be done. For so many reasons, it needs to get done so other projects can roll forward. As my energy levels go down, it gets harder so that I actually have to will myself to get back up there after I climb down and get paint for everyone again. I have to remember how to do things that seem too hard.

I remembered back to when I was helping my secretary Gabrielle Staben and her husband Jeff pick up roofing tiles and load them into this huge dumpster. The roofers knocked a lot off the price if we did the clean up and Gabbie and Jeff didn't have enough money for a roof if we didn't do the clean up, so it was the only way to get it done. We had wheelbarrows and plastic tubs we filled with shovels, pitchforks and gloved hands and then rolled around to the dumpster and up a ramp we made with plywood or later tossed over the side of the dumpster which was taller than I was. It got to be so exhausting that our arms and legs would tremble and burn. But it needed to be done and we would have just quit if we looked at all of it. So we only looked at a four-foot section at a time.

I did the same thing here. I didn't look at the entire project or how much was still left to do or what it is going to take to break the scaffolding down again or move it to a new spot. I only looked at the three-foot section I was painting, or the cans I was refilling, or the brush I was cleaning or the section of scaffolding in front of me I was climbing.

A week later on my day off I am reclining on a short section of scaffolding (kind of like Michelangelo) texturing the other half of the garage ceiling that the builders never finished when they built the house for mom and dad. (By the way, texturing a ceiling is SIN. A mistake. Repent of this error and don't do it. I don't know if God thinks so, I but I certainly do. It is hard work, ugly and intensely messy.) Anyway, I have this really thick heavy paint and plaster mixture that first you roll on with a loop roller (it falls off on you and drips on the floor) then you take this natural sea sponge and blot it and fill in holes and more of the stuff drips on you. My arms started burning and I started going slower and slower. At first I put it up only with the sea sponge, but that took two hours for a four by eight section, so I started using the roller to spread and then blotting. It looked almost as good and sped things up. But I was still going slower and slower. I looked at how many four by eight sections were still left and I almost quit right then. (I was getting dehydrated and didn't realize it. I was drinking, but not enough).

Then I remembered the lesson about only doing small sections at a time and started focusing only on two by two foot sections of the ceiling. Slowly to the sound of classical music and then Broadway musicals on the public radio station I finished the ceiling in about four more hours. I did get rescued by the Rose's coming out to transport the scaffolding in their pickup and Deb bringing drinks for all of us. But I couldn't have done it if I hadn't narrowed my focus to only small pieces of the job.

Ok, I seem to have learned the lesson God was trying to teach me about getting big physical projects done, but I think God wanted me to learn more from this teaching. This lesson can also apply to projects that look huge that aren't just physically exhausting. This lesson is important for even harder projects, like working with people and designing and starting new ministries and a new alternative worship service to help us reach out to people who need new sounds to hear God calling them.

Of course you have to look at the whole project in order to know what resources you need. You have to get all your supplies on hand or you waste a lot of time running back to the store for more paint or brushes, or in this case a lap top, a projector, screen, sound system, microphones, and music, musicians and most importantly names of people to invite and reach out to when we are ready as well as some excitement and joy in God to offer them when they get here. Ok, we know what we need, and we can work out the details of exactly what equipment and work at finding the names of people who need to hear God's love. But how do you keep going at working out all those details and finding those names? How do you keep going when you don't see much progress and it feels like you can't pull off something so big?

It is the same problem with thinking that creeps into your head when working on a big construction project. Now is the time to focus on the small parts and break all the big things into small parts you can accomplish, see that you did it and go on to the next one till you find out to your surprise that the project is completed. Now that is pretty easy when it comes to painting or picking up tiles. It's quite a bit harder with a project involving people, or we would all be doing it naturally.

It can be done, but only if you remember to try and do it. It is the idea behind lists. But most lists don't break the jobs down into small enough steps so you never see any progress and feel overwhelmed. Take this newsletter for example. The "to do" list said "Summer Newsletter." But that involved calling people for articles, typing articles in, getting paper, ink, masters, toner, calling the photocopy people for maintenance work, formatting the newsletter, inserting clip art, editing articles, printing, past up, making masters, collating, stapling and mailing. But even that is too large. Calling involves all the names you called, the people you had to go pick stuff up from who don't have email or a computer to put it on a disk for you. It involves me and Gabrielle writing our own articles and editing them and writing articles for those people who don't have time but still have information that needs to get in and writing articles that should be in, but no one wants to write them. When you make the list detailed enough you can feel a real sense of accomplishment as you get parts done.

Or if you are not careful to keep your mind focused, you can just overwhelm yourself with all the stuff and feel helpless. That's when the job looks too big again. So the lesson God was trying to teach me is back again, only focus on a small part and do it, stop, notice, celebrate and go on to the next one. The "Lord loves a cheerful giver" quote is not talking only about money. How we work also reflects on our spiritual lives and our relationships with God, each other and ourselves.

I hope this lesson God shared with me is helpful to you as I am trying to make it helpful to me. Together we can do the impossible, one tiny step at a time.

Your brother-in-Christ,
Reverend Michael Lee Burgess

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