During our firefighter training this week, the crew went for a site visit to the tallest building in our community to walk through various fire attack scenarios. What makes this building unique to our island is that it has a standpipe system that allows a fire truck to attach a line from the truck to a pipe at ground level, and then pump water through that pipe system to the floors above. At each floor, in each stairwell, is part of that standpipe system with openings that give firefighters a place to connect their hoses and then advance to the point of the fire. It is a far more efficient way to provide firefighters with a water supply at the elevation that it is needed, and therefore it is important that our firefighting crews know where they are and how to utilize them.
While we were wrapping up that portion of the exercise, our training officer then posed a critical question: what do you do if the standpipe system doesn’t work? We had the same end objective, but now we couldn’t attack it the way that it was supposed to be done. This new scenario required us to consider the location of the truck, the various hoses and equipment on the truck, which items could be pulled together to approximate the same outcome, and then build a new system on the fly to reach the top floor. And, by the way, we had to do this considering that the best solution had to be not merely able to deliver water in necessary quantities to the appropriate location, but it had to be implemented as quickly as possible.
What allowed us to successfully complete this new challenge was understanding what we had at our disposal. The trucks carry quite a bit of equipment, including hoses of various lengths and diameter, tools, nozzles, and valves, all designed for specific purposes. But sometimes, the equipment can be utilized for ways other than that primary purpose. The important thing is to know the equipment well enough to know when a piece of equipment will hold up to the demands of a different use. In other words, it wasn’t enough to know what the equipment should do; we needed to know what it could do.
When you live on a bridgeless island without grocery or hardware stores, you have to be prepared to make due when you don’t have something that the instructions normally call for. And whether it is improvising in the kitchen, in the workshop, or on the scene of a fire, having a detailed knowledge of the basics allows us to create solutions on the fly when a certain scenario prevents us from staying on the regular script. It is important to be able to do that wherever you may live, either on an island or on the mainland.
As a pastor, I find this concept especially true when it comes to my knowledge of the Bible. I am regularly confronted, either by my own thinking or in conversation with others, with faith-related questions that may not seem to be immediately addressed in the Bible. By properly understanding the problem, and then navigating through the various sections of Scripture that address critical components, a solid answer is usually revealed. The best part of this, however, is that this knowledge is not exclusively mine. Rather, it is available to anyone who is willing to pick up a Bible and study it. So many of the problems that we find ourselves facing can be addressed, mitigated, and avoided in the future, if we have a good enough knowledge of God’s Word to weave it into our daily decision-making process. It is the greatest multi-purpose tool in our toolbox, so I strongly encourage getting to know what it can do for you.
Peace and blessings – Pastor Aaron