Jesus Wore a Hardhat: Finding the Cross in the Trenches
Over a forty-year span in the construction industry, you learn a lot about structural foundations—but you learn even more about human nature.
In my early years, I was driven by pure heart and raw ambition. But make no mistake, I was a greenhorn regardless. It didn’t take long for me to find out how secret-society-like modern trade unions could be. If you didn’t fit into a particular, predetermined mold, you were pushed to the outer fringes. Honestly, it was nothing new. It was a pattern similar to all of life’s standard lessons—we see it in school, in the Marines, in college, and inevitably, in the everyday workplace.
Somewhere deep down inside me, I think my entire path was a quiet quest to find a working environment completely free from all the cliquish, exclusionary “Handshakes” that govern the system.
Because of that longing, I explored almost every skill set up close and personal. I wanted to touch them all. Right before hitting the field, I had left a position sitting behind a desk as a civil draftsman for City Hall—a job I held for three solid years. But I craved a hands-on environment. I wanted to build things, just like when I was a kid.
Growing up, my mother used to always say, “You’re the only kid I ever had who could tear up a Tonka Truck.” If you grew up around my generation, you remember those infamous, heavy metal Tonka trucks that mirrored real-world construction vehicles: dump trucks, graders, backhoes, and cranes. Having a set of those meant hours and hours of unadulterated fun. It didn’t matter if you had a sandbox or no sandbox—a patch of dirt, a pile of mud, or a collection of leaves and twigs was more than enough. I must have worked my toy fleet until the rubber wheels literally fell off.
When you are a child and you finally see real-world construction being performed with the exact same machinery as your bedroom toy collection, it leaves a permanent mark. It makes a massive impact. Looking back, those metal trucks completely molded my direction and forged my career path. I wanted to be out there among the giants. So, I went after it: Operating Engineers Local 101, IBEW local electricians, boilermakers, plumbers, brickies, glaziers, plasterers… the list goes on.
On this one particular day, I was working as an electrician on a massive commercial building, about seven or eight stories high. I think it might have been the new Capital One building, though I’m not entirely certain. My task was installing the heavy interior wiring for the building’s permanent lights and outlets, working strictly off the engineering blueprints. When you handle a layout like that, you do the wiring for seven or eight entire stories, and then you have to go all the way back down to the ground floor and start manually hanging the heavy light fixtures. Since a raw building skeleton only has temporary string drop lights, you quickly realize just how vital the electrical phase is to the life of the entire project.
However, if you are anything like me, you deal with a little bit of… what do they call it? Attention deficit?
I can get incredibly bored the moment an immediate goal is achieved. In this case, being stuck indoors running up and down the exact same seven or eight concrete floors, pulling miles of wire, and installing 2×4 fluorescent troffer lights by the dozens felt completely mundane. I could look out the window and see dozens of fascinating micro-projects taking place in unison across the job site.
To cope, I would always calculate the unfavorable tasks that didn’t bother me as much as they bothered other guys. For instance, I absolutely love the rain. Sending me out into a storm filled with thick mud, heavy boots, and wet clothes never bothered me. But that blazing, direct summer heat? That was never a friend of mine.
It happened to be an exceptionally beautiful, mild day. Standing inside, looking at two completed stories of fluorescent light grids, I looked up at the ceiling and thought, “Another five or six stories of this? Ugh.”
I decided to march over to the Site Supervisor to see if I could catch an assignment outside working on the massive parking lot lighting layout. From the high windows, I had been watching the skid steers, backhoes, excavators, and motor graders shift the earth. It was bringing back those vivid childhood memories of my rugged Tonka Construction Fleet.
While waiting for the temporary external hoist elevator on the top floor, I watched the giant tower crane gracefully lifting and moving heavy pallets of materials and supplies through the air. As I descended to the ground floor in that open hoist, taking in the sweeping view and the orchestrated teamwork of all the various trades moving in perfect harmony, my spirit felt completely refreshed. I was finally going to be outside for the rest of the day.
The heavy equipment had already finished the “fun stuff”—digging the long, deep utility trenches for the sprawling parking lot light system. I was strictly the grunt on this phase, but at least I was out in the open air. My job was staging bundles of heavy, grey schedule 40 PVC electrical conduit along the open trenches, terminating them with a clean 90-degree elbow that pointed straight up into the bottom of the concrete tube pillars where the heavy steel light poles would eventually be bolted down.
Talk about routine work for a wondering mind like mine. In the ditch, out the ditch. Pick up a heavy bundle of schedule 40, throw it across your back, march down into the ditch. Looking across that vast, football-field-sized expanse of raw dirt, rolling mounds, heavy machinery, and structural ironwork, you quickly start to feel like a grasshopper walking among giants.
As I staged the pipes, I began to feel a deep annoyance creeping in. I was looking at the exact “toys” I had mastered as a child, yet I wasn’t allowed to play with them. Not even for a second look or a quick tryout. Why didn’t they give me a shot on the machines?
By now, I had successfully worked myself into a quiet, internal fury. You could tell exactly how mad I was just by looking at my work demeanor—I was marching, stomping, and humping those heavy pipe bundles like crazy, muttering to myself, “One day I will show you. I will show all of you!”
Right at that exact moment, the sun broke cleanly through a thick cloud it had been playing hide-and-seek with all afternoon. I felt that break in the clouds was directly on my behalf, because God knew the blazing heat would have ruined my attitude out there.
I was facing due East, readying myself to lift another heavy bundle of schedule 40 conduit. I bent over the stack, dropping my hips into a textbook, explosive Olympic “snatch” position. I rubbed the dirt off my palms, kicked the mud off the heels of my boots, and in one continuous, powerful motion, I snatched that heavy bundle up over my head and rested it cleanly across my shoulders. I was in peak physical shape, wearing my classic blue jean bib overalls, a white t-shirt, a yellow hardhat, and rugged tan boots.
With the heavy load balanced on my back, I turned around to face due West, placing the bright afternoon sun directly at my back.
For some reason, I paused and looked down—more than likely just to check my footing and make sure there were no hazardous obstructions or trenches in my immediate path before taking a step forward.
In that split second, the sun seemed to gleam just a little bit brighter. I looked down a second time, focusing directly on the long shadow stretching out in front of me at a 10 o’clock angle.
What I saw took my breath away. It was miraculous.
My shadow—my exact silhouette against the raw dirt—looked identical to Jesus carrying the heavy cross up Calvary. A rugged cross, but topped with the distinct, unmistakable outline of a construction hardhat.
At that exact continuous instance, the entire vision was conceived. The image didn’t need to be drawn out on paper; it was burned into my mind. The caption hit me instantly: “Jesus Wore a Hardhat.”
When you feel like a grasshopper among giants, when you feel excluded by the cliquish handshakes of the world, and when you are humping the heaviest burdens across your shoulders in the dirt—remember that you are never walking alone. The ultimate Master Builder already carried the heaviest beam for you. And He did it all while wearing the ultimate hardhat of protection over your life.
Share Your Thoughts with the bigCOMMUNITY
This reflection has been decades in the making, and I want to hear how it hits your spirit today.
- Have you ever had a completely ordinary, stressful workday suddenly interrupted by a profound reminder of God’s presence?
- What heavy “bundle” are you carrying across your shoulders right now that you need to surrender to the ultimate Master Builder?
Let’s talk about it in the comments below. Drop your story, share your walk, and let’s lift each other up!
Leave a Reply