What is That Contraption?

June 10, 2006

Quite a few years ago, I was the Sunday School teacher for an exception bunch of fourth and fifth graders. I have always liked to teach using analogies to develop truths. One Sunday I put the breathing system from the anesthesia machine that I was designing at Draeger Medical into a cardboard box and took it to class. I told them that the night before I had witnessed the most amazing sight! This streak of light, like a meteor approached the house from the east. Something bright and shiny landed in the field across from my house. The machine, whatever it was, settled onto the ground and soon a door opened in the front surface. A ramp pivoted downward onto the grass and two creatures that looked like little, glowing, green men descended the ramp. In their arms they carried this funny shaped object. They carefully placed it on the ground, looked around for a moment and then returned to their machine. The ramp lifted with a slight whirring sound, the craft lifted off the ground, hovered there for a moment, and then with a whoosh, streaked away into the eastern sky from whence it had come.

Shaken, but curious, I slipped into my shoes and eased out of the front door of the house. I cautiously snuck up to the area where the machine had alighted and saw the object that they had deposited still sitting there on the ground. Rather than risk contamination, I left it sitting there and ran back to the house and grabbed a box and some gloves. Returning, I carefully picked up the contraption and placed it into the box. It was not overly heavy, so I was able to carry it back to the garage and keep it there until morning. I was excited to bring it to class with me and see if they could help me figure out what it was!

With their curiosity thoroughly aroused, I undid the top of the box and lifted the odd contraption from its resting place. It was all a tangle of hoses and valves with a large translucent canister attached to its underside. The black of the base contrasted with the shiny silver of the metal parts. A rubber balloon dangled from the longest hose. What could be the purpose of such a device?

The kids started to squeeze the balloon and blow into the hoses. They twisted the knobs and flipped the switches. They turned it over and poked around in the recesses. Suggestions were made that the canister could be filled with water or soda. Perhaps it was a portable fish bowel. Or an alien breath analyzer or a galactic telephone.

Of course, they quickly realized that my story about it being dropped off by some aliens was an elaborate ruse, but what  was it really? I told them that in fact it was a device that allows patients to breath and keeps them alive during surgery. Not only did I know the purpose of the device, but I was friends with the person who had designed it. His name was Jan Sievertsen and he lived in Germany. If they wanted to know anything more about it I could give them his phone number and they could call and talk with him. Better yet, he had written an entire operators manual on the unit so that every doctor would understand its design and the correct way to use it.

By now the light was slowly dawning on them about where this little demonstration was going. They, the young boys and girls marveling at this breathing system, were analogous to that complicated devise with all its dangling hoses and mysterious valving. And it was God, the one who created them, that they could get in contact with via prayer. And the operators manual was the Holy Bible that our loving Creator had so graciously provided us. Mr. Sievertsen would never have designed his breathing system and placed it out there in the hospitals without any way for doctors to understand it and its purposes. Neither would God have created them, such wonderful boys and girls, and left them without an instruction book and a way to contact him as they attempt to find their purposes in life.

But just in case I had made my story too vivid, I told them that there was no need to pressure their parents to stop and let them look for spaceship tracks in the field across from my house! God could be trusted to be there for them everyday, very unlike those fickle aliens!