In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness
Titus 2:7 (NIV)
Good Work and Plain Speech
The crest road is wet from the night and Merle is out on it walking the gate stems, with the fog still lying on the water. He takes the first one eleven and a half rounds, the number he was handed, and then stands with a hand on the rail listening to the water find the conduit somewhere underneath him. None of the eleven and a half is written down anywhere. He got it off a man who’s been dead nine years, and he’s checked it against the gauge every spring since.
The contractor’s crew comes at eight for the drawdown. Walking four men through the order of the stems takes most of a morning, and doing it himself takes forty minutes, and he has both those numbers too. So Merle is up here ahead of them, working through it alone, and by the time the trucks are at the gate the part that matters will be finished and there will be nothing on the crest for anybody to watch.
In everything set them an example by doing what is good. Titus is to do it in everything, and everything here is aimed at the ones who are watching him. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness. Setting an example puts the doing where somebody can see it, and the teaching adds the words to it. Both halves happen with a person there.
There’s a pleasure I look forward to and don’t get often: a whole hour where I can watch somebody do a thing well from the start of it to the end. Titus has both jobs running at once. He does the good work, and he does it where they can watch him do it, and then he stands there and says how.
He backs the last stem off a half turn, the note under the crest changes, and the drawdown is going. The trucks will be at the gate inside the hour, and there’ll be nothing up on the road to look at when they get there. Who gets the eleven and a half after Merle?
A Prayer to Remember
Teach me one thing well enough to show it to somebody, Lord, and then send me the somebody. Let my hands stay straight in the hours when nobody’s checking. And when there is a person watching me work, give me the seriousness the work deserves and none of the airs that usually come with it.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
