As Long as I've Got King Jesus

Music boomed from a nearby white compact car as I exited my truck before 8:00 a.m. at Gulistan Carpet, the carpet manufacturing company I work for in Aberdeen, N.C.

That small vehicle almost rocked. I heard melodic phrases I couldn’t quite understand and then “be-bop, be-bop” percussion accents. When that musical pattern stopped, a young African-American lady with her head covered by a do-rag stepped from the white car.

“That’ll get me motivated to go in there,” she said, smiling and nodding toward the large manufacturing building located across the parking lot from us.

“What’s the name of that song?” I called to her, as she headed toward the brick structure housing our company’s yarn preparation and tufting departments.

“‘As Long as I’ve Got King Jesus!’” she called back.

“All right!” I said. “I’ve got Him, too!”

“That’s what it’s all about,” she said. “A lot of people don’t have him.”

I walked toward our company’s product development building, located on the opposite side of the parking lot from the manufacturing plant.

I wondered if that young woman worked in “tufting” and might face a day of “creeling,” a process that involves lifting and positioning 12-pound cones of yarn onto metal “limbs” welded onto vertical posts. Each cone of yarn feeds into a plastic tube that runs to a needle. There are about 144 needles placed side-by-side across each tufting machine, and those needles punch yarn into a “backing” during the manufacture of 12-ft. wide “greige” (pronounced “greyzh”). Greige goods, or “gray goods” (a term for un-dyed textiles) are then dyed, latex-backed, sheared and inspected before they’re shipped as carpets to retail flooring stores.

Tufting workers wear earplugs because noisy tufting machines can ruin eardrums. Perhaps a worker might experience loneliness by wearing earplugs during most of an 8-hour shift. I’ve worn them a few times, and they seem to isolate me and cause me to “hear” my own thoughts more keenly.

If that young woman worked in our company’s yarn department, she’d also need earplugs. The roar of twisting-and-winding machines can deafen, too. And she’d need a good spine, as “doffing” (taking 12-pound cones from machines and replacing them with empties) while making rounds on cement can take a toll on a back and a body.

I suspect that hours of standing on cement, lifting heavy cones and hearing the steady hum-roar of machinery – earplugs can’t totally block noise – could drive a person to seek consolation from King Jesus.

Sometimes a crisis event challenges one’s faith in God, but daily routines, toilsome environments and backside-of-the-desert duties can also sap one’s soul. Faith-threatening thunderclouds may pour gully-washers into our lives, but the steady, monotonous, drip-drip drizzle of daily difficulties can just as surely erode our fields of faith.

I recall seeing this sign in a shoe repair shop: “It’s not the mountain ahead that gets you – it’s the grain of sand in your shoe.”

During a difficult trial or even a run-of-the-mill life experience, I often determine to pace myself and cross the finish line with enough reserve left to smile and pose for pictures. But all too soon I find myself huffing and puffing on some lonely backstretch of my “race,” and tedium lays heavy hands on the shoulders of my soul. I feel strength drain from my spirit and, in my tired mind, hear these words spoken by a despair-filled voice: “What’s it all worth?”

But then I remember these words penned by St. Paul: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Romans 8:35, 37). And I recall that Jesus said, “I’ll never leave you nor forsake you.” And then I know, deep down, that I can face all of life’s challenges, as long as I’ve got King Jesus.