If you ever want to see adults turn into children, just take them to a fire station. 

This morning, all the staff at Bel Air Pres went down the street to the local fire station to host breakfast for the firemen stationed there. It was our way of showing our appreciation for them and the hard work they do to keep us safe up on this fire-prone hill. 

As soon as the station captain offered us the opportunity to look around the station, grown women and men were crawling all over the big red fire trucks and in and out of the station doors like 5 year olds. And I was one of them. 

After me and my 5 year old brain climbed off the cherry-red fire engine, I struck up a conversation with the youngest fireman there; Aaron. As we talked about his young career as a fireman, I asked him how firemen choose where they get to work. He said, “Most guys want to be in the busiest stations. They try to go where the action is. Nobody wants to be sitting around twiddling their thumbs. We’ve been trained to fight fires, and we want to get some action out there.” 

Go ahead and call me super-spiritual, but as I got an understanding of the fireman’s mentality, I couldn’t help but think about out lives as Christians. As Christians, do we want to be where the action is?  Are we ready to go to the most dangerous places, to help those with the most immediate and desperate need, to answer the call of something greater than ourselves? And are we creating times of rest for ourselves between these times of “action” so that we are re-charged and ready for God’s next call?

 As I continue to grow in this Christian life, I hope to “grow up” to be a fireman. I hope to be somebody that when the alarm goes off in somebody else’s life, or when God says “go”, that like the fireman I met today, I will be anxious to go where the action is.

 Isaiah 6:8

~ by chris on October 27, 2009.