Thoughts for a New Year

Is there a fine line between hoping you’ll never be called upon to use the skills you’ve learned and hoping to practice those skills to the fullest?  Time, money, and effort are put into the preparation of firefighters to serve as a First Response to whatever might happen.  Agreements are forged between communities to support one another.  Layers of support from the county, the state, and the federal governments stand behind the local firehouse.

On any given day, there might be the ‘big one’, the crisis that calls for ‘all hands on deck’.  It might be accident, it might be deliberate, it might be terrorist in origin.  When driving through the City of Perth Amboy, one can see homes and businesses or one can see worst case scenarios. 

As a chaplain, I pray to God that it won’t happen, and I pray to God to protect those responding when it does happen.  As a minister, I pray to God for any and all who are affected by the crisis. 

But maybe it is not about the skills.  Those are important, they keep firefighters alive.  But maybe the challenge is not about using the skills or not.  Maybe the challenge is about testing oneself.  How will I respond when the crisis comes?  Will I rise to the occasion, drop to my training, break completely? 

Is that the challenge of 2015, not wishing for a fire, crisis, or disaster, but looking for the opportunity to test yourself, to press your limits, to overcome the greatest difficulties and emerge victorious?  Then, for 2015, I pray to God that every man will have the spirit, the courage, and the skill to be the master of their vocation.