Posted on Wednesday 1 July 2009
It’s pretty hot in my office.
My office is in a church in Apple Valley, Ca and despite the pleasant sounding name of my home town, this means that I am in the middle of the Mojave Desert, the third largest desert in the world. And in case you were unaware, most deserts get pretty hot, especially in the summer.
Anyhow, my office is pretty hot. I thought it was because the offices in my church are all in a straight line, adjacent to each other, and share the same air conditioning ducts. My office is at the end, and so it’s the last office to get cool air, and thus, my office is usually really hot.
But that’s not really the case…
The church building is pretty old and so, as with most older buildings, there are a certain number of things that don’t work as well as they did when they were installed. I was under the assumption that there was nothing that I could do to fix the dilemma of my office climate because, well, the building is old and the design is faulty. At least, that’s what I thought.
I was getting increasingly hot and thought that it was bad to be sitting at my desk sweating, when I realized that the A/C was on; cool air should have been filling my office, but it was not. I grabbed a ladder and ascended to the A/C vent on the ceiling just above my desk. The air conditioner was still running, but there was no air coming through the vent.
Screwdriver.
I needed a screwdriver.
I opened the vent to find that, contrary to my belief, there was not an open duct, but rather a small, sealed box-like-area behind the vent. I noticed something hanging from the center back of this box-like-area, a piece metal, obviously once attached to the rest of itself, and I reach in and pulled on it.
WOOSH!
A blast of cold air.
The back of the box-like-area revealed itself to be another, spring-loaded set of vents that was closed up tight. The small piece of metal that I had pulled was a part of a broken clasp that held this secondary vent open. The clasp was, like the rest of the building, quite old, and had stopped doing it’s job. I MacGyvered the broken clasp with a piece of extra speaker wire that I found and now the vents stay open.
It is now quite cool in my office.
The thing is, it could have been cool in my office WEEKS ago. Had I checked the vent, I’d have discovered this problem early on. I had assumed that because the building was old, it could only work at certain capacities, but that was not the case.
And this is what we do so often in life.
We assume that things are working in the only way that they can, but the fact is that if we take a closer look, we can find a solution for better function. How many times have we assumed that things could only work one way, only to find out that there was another, better way the whole time?
It seems as though we think that existing systems are the only way that world can function. Or that the company has always done one particular thing and will only ever do one particular thing. Or that our church has always been this kind of church and could never be that kind of church.
But the truth is, the thing that once made our system, or company, or church function so well was, at that time, an innovation, a new solution to a pre-existing issue. So, why then have we ceased looking for new solutions, or have stopped trying to find ways to improve old systems that could work if they were still functioning like they were supposed to? Is it not true that the best way to make an impact in the world is to find a need and fill it? (Thanks to Tommy & Matthew Barnett for that)
I think that we can easily become apathetic towards our situations, that we can forget that without proper maintenance, improvements, and changes that our systems will fail.
Whatever you may do, be encouraged that the right kinds of change and improvement can make a world of difference.
Now, how do I turn this air conditioner off? It’s freezing in here…
Grace.
Peace.
-m




