Yesterday my son and I, along with several of his non-Boy Scout friends, started working on his Eagle Scout Service Project. Before the troop shows up next Saturday for a day of work, there was some preliminary work that needed to be done.
As we all worked away under the direction of a future Eagle Scout, we didn't seem to mind so much that it was hot, sweaty, disgusting work. We all just seemed to enjoy working together and sharing stories. The entire experience reminded me of other Eagle Scout Service Projects that I have been a part of: creating a walking trail, creating a fire ring and erecting a flagpole at state park, overhauling bleachers at a middle school, erecting benches at a park, overhauling a playscape at a church, setting up mile markers on the trail around Lake Georgetown, etc. This made me wonder how many of these there are in the area that I am NOT aware of and how many of them may bless our own town of Bruceville-Eddy.
Practically none of the parents who use the bleachers that we started constructing today will know that it was a part of a young man's trail to Eagle. Likewise, those working on this project may never see anyone enjoying the benefits of our labor. This is exactly like much of the work that we do in the world out of our love for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We may never know the lives touched by our response to his command to “love our neighbor as ourself.” We may never know, but that does not change the fact that that the world is a little bit brighter than it was before.
I'm reminded of the many times I watched my father notice a car in a parking lot with the headlights on. This was before the days when people locked their car doors and before automatic headlight off switches. He would always go over and turn the lights off. Once I remarked, “They won't even know that you turned the lights off and prevented them from having a dead battery. The will probably just think that they turned their lights off themselves.”
He answered, “I will know.”
God bless,
Pastor Brad
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