My wife and I have been out on a ministry tour for a month now. We have another two months to go. For the last two weekends we have been in the neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota. We are now on our way to Iowa. We spent the 4th of July in the little town of Lyons, Nebraska, population: 814. Downtown feels like something out of a movie on the A&E channel. The 4th of July parade seemed to have been composed of half the city parading for the other half, their friends and relatives, in the audience. In the evening, the fire department hosted the town’s dinner. There were quite a few events on that 4th of July and my wife and I strolled the town looking at what was happening. One of the events particularly drew my attention. The flyer said, “Blind Tractor Race”. Were these local farmers really going to drive their tractors blind? It sounded quite reckless to me. I wanted to see this. As I arrived I was delighted to see what was really happening. The driver of the tractor was really going to be blindfolded, but standing beside him, sitting and holding the best he could to whatever he could find, was a seeing person who gave verbal instructions to the blindfolded driver. People sometime talk farmers down, but according to someone I know, these farmers were actually pretty smart: they had the seeing leading the blind! Many lessons can be drawn from this. First, it is a real exercise of trust and humility for the driver who is put in a position of vulnerability and dependence. It is also an exercise of integrity for the seeing person who has to make sure to give clear instructions and be patient. There was one team of a father and an young teenager who reminded me of what it feels like to raise teenagers in the world. Another team was a team of women who didn’t seem to have good communication so the tractor went all over the place. In the Bible, blindness is used as an imagery for ignorance. So I felt that this exercise presented a good illustration of what it to be a teacher. All in all, I felt that it was a good illustration of what it is to be It is a good illustration of what it is to be a teacher. SEE FOLLOWING VIDEOS https://youtu.be/pmDs5ShuhWc https://youtu.be/afV_wjX0nRI
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
If you appreciate these articles, support their upcoming publication in a book called, "REFLECTIONS OF A FIRE CHAPLAIN"
|