When most girls were playing with dolls, I was rummaging through my Daddy’s wire box in the basement. These multi-colored coated wires of various lengths were abandoned, hopelessly entwined in a huge cardboard box.
Most of the wires were white with thin ribbons of red, yellow, green or blue twisted around it like candy cane stripes – perfect for shaping into pretty rings and necklaces, and irresistibly intriguing to my young eyes. But the wire box could only hold my attention for so long. It was, after all, a chaotic wad of scrap wire and I could only tolerate its disorder for so long. Still, wire has always had a presence in my life.
At church, Daddy managed the sound booth and found me to be a quick study and willing assistant. He taught me how to set up all the mikes on the platform, plug in their respective cords and test each one during his routine sound checks.
Over the decades from high school through my thirties, I unwound, duct-taped and then rewound cords at rock concerts, play productions, outdoor events, magic shows, seminars, etc., for every device that required power.
Last month I was put in charge of an online production studio. One Saturday I spent ten hours with two coworkers rewiring, rerouting and reconfiguring the entire studio to go-live that Monday in South America. I personally labeled both ends of every cable, wire, mike and headset. All wires connected to the English machines I labeled in green and all wires connected to the Spanish machines I labeled in red, along with all their respective devices.
It didn’t occur to me until I left the studio that evening that I just did what my Daddy taught me to do all those years ago at church. A big smile spread across my face as I drove home with sore knees and cobwebs in my hair from crawling around on the floor feeding wires through walls – Daddy would be so proud of me!
But this is not just a story about wires or wire jewelry. This is a revelation. Yes, everything on earth reveals God’s laws, principles and glory to humanity, but to me, wires hold a profound life principle: connect to the correct source of power, and stay connected, or nothing works.
This revelation became clear a few days later when I had to teach another coworker how the studio was configured so she could quickly diagnose any issues that might arise during the online training sessions. Together, we carefully followed each cord from its device to its power source, identified its purpose and inspected its label. As I heard myself instruct her through this exercise, I realized that I was speaking my Daddy’s words to me so long ago: follow the cable to the source; make sure both ends are plugged in securely.
That’s it! That is what we need to do to live on this planet! We simply must be securely connected to the correct power source to function. When things go wrong, when we get disconnected from our true power source, we have a small amount of auxiliary power, but make not mistake, it will run out. We can only survive on our parent’s religion, good deeds, or a decades-old spiritual encounter for so long. When we don’t personally connect one-on-one with God – Who alone is the source of life – we end up like that big box of scrap wire in a chaotic web: purposeless and only good for wire jewelry.
Jesus preached this principle of connection to the power source. In his last words to his disciples before his arrest, he said, Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.
John 15:4-5
Regardless of the metaphor, be it a wire, a cable or a vine, we must be connected to the correct power source to not only exist, but to live productive, useful and meaningful lives.