On May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was opened. A mammoth suspension bridge connecting the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, the bridge took thirteen years to build and claimed twenty-seven lives.

The construction of the bridge was detailed in the 1980 Ken Burns documentary Brooklyn Bridge. The documentary tells the story of the bridge foundation which was constructed by creating two enormous caissons (an underwater dome). These underwater domes were lowered into the waters as hoses pumped air into the dome creating an underwater auditorium.

Thousands of Irish immigrants worked on the underwater portion of the bridge construction. Working with shovels, picks, wheelbarrows, steel bar stone breakers, winches and ten ton hydraulic jacks, the bridge began to rise. Each week they would see several feet added to their painstaking task of building the foundation of a bridge while underwater. It was eighteen months and 78 feet of construction before the two bridge towers finally cracked the surface of the water.

These Irish immigrants came to be known as ‘sand grunts’. Their work was dirty, hard, out of sight and under the surface where no one could observe their progress as they build the Brooklyn Bridge.

A great deal of the work of ministry qualifies pastors to be sand grunts. As pastors, we are called to work in areas, which are more often than not, below the surface and unseen. Every so often, the Lord graciously allows our work to ‘break the surface’ and be recognized.

If we as pastors are working for the recognition of others, we will regularly live under the misery of under appreciation and frustration.

Yet, if we find our self worth in Jesus, not in the acclamation of others, we will find that we can glory in working beneath the surface.

Thanks be to God, you are a sand grunt!