I have heard stay-at-home for the Corona Covid-19 Virus must be like what Noah and his family went through, but I am sure they had a lot of tasks to do caring and cleaning up for the animals. I am not sure if Noah’s family had much idle time. Now, I keep reading about people with all of this extra time now due to various reasons: out of work, being paid to stay home, or just having nothing to do after work.
I work remotely for IBM, so not a lot of changes for me, except my wife and son are now here while I work. My wife is working remotely as a teacher. She started this as a job change right when stay-at-home started, so extra stress there. My son is in middle school taking classes remote.
I admit after the winter, I want to be out and about going places, getting out of the house. I guess I have a case of Spring-Fever. So being home all the time is a bit annoying. I am taking daily walks outside, and I am finding that helps. I talk to my friends in Milan, Italy, and they can’t leave their homes except for food. Thinking about my friends in harder hit areas with harder restrictions lets me count my blessings that I can still be outside.
I have also been spending a lot of time working on a small evangelism project. Last year you might have seen my article on Easter Eggs as seeds. My son and I went to Star Wars Celebration Chicago. It is traditional to bring something to give away at Star Wars conventions, called swag. Swag comes in many shapes and sizes, from small buttons someone makes, to custom action figures. Last year, with the convention being near Easter, we gave away Easter Eggs with R2D2 type droids inside. It had a Bible verse on each side of the egg and on the droid. There is a no solicitation policy, so this is as far as we can go with the evangelism.
This year, my son and I racked our brains for something to do this August at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim California. We came up with two ideas: lightsaber hilts as ends for a pen, and making Star Wars ships: in both cases, with a Bible verse on them.
So we went out and found some neat pens that looked like a lightsaber, and wrote in colored ink. I also saw colored pencils that looked cool and we got some of those. Well it turns out the pens were triangle shape we found out when we broke open the packaging. We had some issues with that shape and printing something out of plastic that stayed tight enough not to fall off if used in an impromptu light saber fight, and yet could still be removed. We ended up printing them in TPU instead. TPU is soft and flexible, kind of like rubber. It is great for taking the end off the pen and putting it back on, but it did soften the details of the lightsaber hilts.
Now the colored pencils came out great. We are very happy with how they look. I came up with nine different hilt designs, each with a Bible verse (about swords) referenced. Hopefully it will get someone interested in the reference. Here are how they came out:
My friend Matthew at work and I were talking about how we were spending our time and coping with the virus restrictions. He performs music after work, so his normal routine is really curtailed. We talked and figured out that both of our outlets right now are creativity. Having something creative to do helps us keep focused on something meaningful. He has turned from performing music, to doing portraits of family pets for friends. Check out three samples:
We see in the Bible right at the beginning, Genesis 1:1a:
“In the beginning God created….”
that God created. I believe that with man created in his image, Genesis 1:26a:
“Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness”
he built us to also enjoy creating. So for me, taking time to create right now is helping me focus on something productive. Moreover, we are also told to use the gifts that God gave us:
Romans 12:6a
Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly:”
When my son joined FTC Robotics last year, and I signed up as a volunteer, we quickly found out that my son had a gift for drafting. In a couple weeks my son became their lead drafter, over kids that had done this for a year. This year, he drafted 95% of the 3D parts we used on our robot and won a drafting award at competition. To encourage him my family bought a 3D printer.
A few months later, that turned into two 3D printers. We found we were able to use our drafting gifts for the Lord in various ways. Let me clarify, that my son is using a professional drafting program called Solidworks. I on the other hand am using an amateur program called Tinkercad that is free. Tinkercad is fun, and I have done a lot with it, but it can’t match the precision my son can do with a professional program.
Well I had my pencil and pen light saber hilts, so with those in hand, I decided to move onto our second idea and see if I could make some ships from Star Wars. Now the tough part was we wanted them to be able to print in one piece, and not have to be glued together, so they would be sturdier for kid’s play. A 3D printer prints one layer at a time from top to bottom, something like a normal Tie Fighter is out, since there is no nice way to support the ball in the middle since it doesn’t touch the bottom with the wings on any side. So we limited the ships we could do right there. We did make some modifications to ships to reinforce them and for the scale we were working with. But we came up with quite a number so far:
Our original idea was to hand these out at Star Wars Celebration as Swag, hoping that the Bible verse would act as a seed to get people looking at their Bibles. We have gone a little overboard at this point, but it is fun using our creativity. As the isolation with the virus has progressed, we considered what 1 Thessalonians 5:11 says:
“Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing.”
We started thinking more about what we had, and we thought, perhaps we could use this as a devotion to send out to some folks that like Star Wars. We started working on this about the time Minnesota went to lockdown, but of course it took time to print all of those ships, not to mention draft them. After all this time of isolation from other folks, we can all use encouragement. Hopefully it will brighten some folks’ days and get them into the word at this needed time. We already got some positive feedback.
Hopefully we can use these resources we created again in the future, as well.
To sum up though, I hope everyone is using what time they have effectively during this major change in our lives. Some of us likely have more time than others. But I challenge you, are you using the time creatively, and to advance the word of God?
© Vivian P. Kirkpatrick, 2020