You Do Not End When the Shift Does

The alarm still went off at 4:40. You shut it off and stayed down, because there is no gate to open and no one waiting on you in a lot. The boots are by the door with last week's mud in the treads. You made a lunch out of habit and it is sitting on the counter, going warm. Twenty years you could say what you do without thinking. This morning the words stop. A man can have a truck in the driveway and still feel like he has been erased.

You want to call the years a waste, because a company can drop you in one sentence. You worked for the foreman, the Friday deadline, the check that cleared on Thursday. If those men are done with you, the careful habits feel pointless, something you can set down with the boots. Paul does not leave the work aimed at them. He aims it at the Lord, who does not discard a man when the checks stop. What you gave your hands to was never only theirs to keep or throw away.

None of that puts your name back on a crew list by dark. It does mean you do not get to fold because a boss stopped needing you. Christ is not impressed by the name on a shirt, and He is not done with you because a foreman was. That is the mercy. The cost is the task still sitting in front of you, which still wants your full hands, paid or not.