I Need More

          In the summer of 1995, David Miller decided to leave the corporate world to go to seminary. He wrote four hundred friends and acquaintances alerting them of his startling decision. He expected his decision to be received with scorn and disdain. What he got instead were positive responses. One summarized well the reaction from the corporate world:

I have worked hard to reach the pinnacle of my profession. I have more money than God, yet I am unfulfilled. My marriage is in shambles, I hardly know my kids, and when I look in the mirror, I wonder where the man went who so idealistically graduated from college 30 years ago and was ready to make his mark on the world. I'd like to talk to my pastor, but he has no clue about my world and the pressures I face. Let me know what you find in seminary. I'd like to talk with you.

             All over the world, successful people are coming to the realization that they need more. I think I know where they can find it. How about you?

’Ol McDonald Had A Farm

            An old story is told of a preacher driving by a farm. Its fields were ripe unto harvest; all rows had been plowed in perfect symmetry. The farm looked picturesque—like the painting of a master artist.

            And then the minister saw the farmer on his tractor. He flagged him down, and the farmer stopped. The preacher introduced himself and, full of enthusiasm, said to the farmer, “My friend, this is beautiful! God has certainly blessed you with a wonderful farm.”

            The farmer suspended movement for a moment and then slowly pulled out his bandana and wiped his brow. He gazed at the preacher, then at the farm, and then back at the preacher again. Then, with deliberation, the farmer said, “Yes, He has, and we’re grateful. But you should have seen this place when He had it all to Himself.”

            Now, I don’t like where some people take that story; namely, to overemphasize the role people play in their lives and thereby diminishing the role God plays. Having said that, I do notice that many Christians go the other direction and reduce the responsibility God has given humans to work. Indeed, work is one way to collaborate with God in his Kingdom.

            As the farmer invested in removing rocks, trees, plowing, sowing seeds…, so we too invest time and effort in our work. This is good, and it was so before the Fall of Adam.

·      Enjoy your work.

·      Invest in it.

·      Work hard.

·      See your work as a collaboration with God.

The Splendor of the Ordinary

            Tradition and scripture indicate that Jesus spent the bulk of his life as a carpenter. Prison Fellowship’s Mark Earley wrote a few years ago about an amusing moment in the movie The Passion of the Christ:

            The scene shows Jesus at work as a carpenter, finishing a table. His mother comes over to examine it. Her opinion? The table is too high.
            Not to worry, Jesus responds; He’ll build tall chairs to go with it.
            Mary is not convinced. As she walks away, she mutters, “It’ll never catch on.”

            That scene playfully reminds us that part of Jesus’ mission consisted of work. In this case, his work was manual, and we forget that it was a service to people.

            Justin Martyr, an early church leader, said in the second century that a common sight in Palestine was that of planters working behind plows Jesus had made when he was a carpenter. What an amazing thought—Jesus worked with his hands, and he cared greatly about the quality of his craftsmanship!

                I don't know who coined the phrase “the splendor of the ordinary,” but I like it. It captures well Jesus’ view toward his daily work.

            Does it capture our view?

Where Opportunity Knocks

           Consultant Bob Beaudine once advised a man who had a deep desire to become the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. He loved baseball and was intricately involved in the game.

            The position was open, and he had to decide whether not to pursue the opportunity; meanwhile, he had another opportunity that did not look so promising. The commissioner's job seemed the better option.

            Beaudine researched the opportunity for Commissioner and came back with the conclusion that it was not likely he would get it. So George decided to pursue his other possibility–run for governor… of Texas. He ran and he won. He ran again and won by an even greater landslide. Then George W. Bush ran for the presidency of the United States twice and won.             

            What looked like a great opportunity was not, and what looked like a poor opportunity was, instead, a life changer.             

             Keep that in mind when you are at work. What to you may seem a dead-end job may instead be the doorway to your future. I have heard it said (and I believe it to be true) that there is virtually no position in business or industry—be it doorman or trash man, maid or waitress—from which someone has not risen to the position of chairman, president, or some other notable location.

            Remember:

• ·      Enjoy your work.
• ·      You never know from whence your next opportunity may come. 

Source: Bob Beaudine, The Power of Who

Myra

            Myra Blalock was a dear, sweet woman. I say, “was”, because Myra passed away a couple of months ago.

            Last week, our church office received a phone call from Myra’s former boss. She effusively praised Myra. From the boss’s description, Myra authentically illustrated her faith through her work.

            Myra’s employer had been wrestling with how she was going to replace someone so valuable. That is why she called Myra’s church—was there someone else there who might be interested in Myra’s old job?

            Do you hear what Myra’s employer was asking? She was trying to account for someone who had stood out so much in the workplace. She was hoping that perhaps the group that helped form Myra’s faith could help her find someone else who would also be impactful.

            I love Myra’s story. It is a great testimony.

            What about us?

            Are we offering our best at work?

            If we are Christians, are we blessing those in our workplace so much that our employers seek to find the community that is helping to form our faith?

The Half-Million Dollar Mistake…That Led To A Fortune

           Mike McCoy wanted to enter the natural gas business; what he needed was a partner. He found one and they decided to drill for natural gas in an asparagus field that they had purchased in Northern California.

            Unfortunately, a valued employee whom McCoy had previously hired made a mistake. He accidentally poured cement into the well and ruined it. That mistake cost a half-million dollars and McCoy and his partner had practically no money left. Now McCoy had to call his new partner and tell him that one of McCoy’s best friends and most trusted employees had lost them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

            McCoy was amazed to discover that his partner reacted in a magnanimous way. He reacted with great equanimity and graciously told McCoy to let his worker keep his job. The partners borrowed another $500,000 and moved the drill bit 100 feet from the spot they had wanted to drill.             

            It was good that McCoy’s partner treated the mistaken employee in such a kind way. The next day the partners hit a reservoir of natural gas. The well was valued at $40 million. That huge and costly mistake actually led to the partner's greatest drilling triumph.

            Sometimes our worst defeats can in fact be laying the groundwork for our greatest victories. Lost gas wells, lost interviews, lost employees, lost bosses, and lost jobs can actually work to steer us in the direction that we need to go. That's why it's important to never allow ourselves to grow discouraged.

            Having said that, some of you may grow discouraged knowing that the windfall of that natural gas well was the critical financial victory that would allow McCoy’s partner to pursue his dream–owning a professional football franchise. Yes, an employee’s costly mistake paved the way for Jerry Jones to buy the Dallas Cowboys.

            And now you know the rest of the story!

The Drone

            The story is told that the great concert pianist, Paderewski, played before Queen Victoria. Listening, she exclaimed with enthusiasm, “Mr. Paderewski, you are a genius!”

            “Your Majesty,” he replied, “perhaps, but before I was a genius, I was a drone.”

            I don’t know if Paderewski was ever a drone; however, there was a time when he had to work and work hard to become a better pianist. Writer Malcolm Gladwell says that “geniuses” must put in a minimum of 10,000 hours pursuing their craft before they can look forward to impacting culture.

            I hope this helps us put our own pursuits in the proper perspective. There is no such thing as an overnight sensation. As we strive to labor in the kingdom of God, it is good to remember that we will need to work hard, no matter how much talent we have.

How to Fail Your Drivers Test

            A few years ago, somebody sent me the following:

            

How to Fail Your Drivers Test

            - Get in the car, look down at the pedals, and say, "now which one is the gas again?"

            - Turn the radio on. When the tester goes to turn it off slap his/her hand.

            - Come dressed in a suit. Before the examiner gets in the car, ask him/her to put a piece of saran wrap down so he doesn't dirty the seat.

             - When the examiner tells you to stop, step on the gas. Tell him/her that you thought it was the brake.

            - In the middle of driving, put your arm around the examiner.

            - When you stop at a light, start revving the engine while looking back and forth between the person next to you and the light.

-       Honk your horn at everything.

           

            Obviously, those are not very good ideas! Instead, one should do his or her very best. It’s the same with anything else we do. The Bible puts it this way, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might….”

I Always Feel Like Someone is Watching Me

            A story I’ve told my kids is one told by General Colin Powell. As a young man, Powell had a job mopping the floors at a soft-drink bottling plant near his home. A story told to him served as his motivation:

            There were once three ditch diggers. The first rested on his shovel and bragged about one day owning the company. The second whined about the long hours and low pay. The last digger kept right on digging.

            The years passed, and the first digger could be still found leaning on his shovel. The second digger had retired: receiving a disability settlement for a fake injury. Meanwhile, the third digger… owned the company.

            Powell wrote, "The moral is no matter what you do, someone is always watching. So I set out to be the best mop wielder there ever was. One day someone let 50 cases of cola crash to the concrete, and brown sticky foam cascaded across the floor. It was almost more than I could bear. But I kept mopping, right to left, left to right. At summer's end, the foreman said, ‘You mop floors pretty good.’ The next summer, he had me filling bottles. The third summer, I was deputy foreman. As I have learned, someone is always watching.”

            The Apostle Paul, in Eph. 6:4-8, emphasizes that someone is always watching as well: God.

The Price of Excellence

            Excellence does not arrive with ease. Even the great ones work hard.

            It is said the renowned pianist, Paderewski, was once asked why he bothered practicing everyday.

            “If I miss one day’s practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it.”

Your Job Impacts Your Home

             Some say a person’s job doesn’t influence his home life. I don’t know about that.

            A boy’s family moved to another city. Registering on his first day of school, the boy was asked by the school secretary, "What's your father's occupation?"

            "He's a magician," said the new boy.

            "How exciting. What's his best trick?"

            "He saws people in half."

            "How impressive! Now, do you have any brothers or sisters?"

            "Yep... one half brother and two half sisters."

             Be careful about taking your work home.

Taking Your Work Home

            We should never take our work home. An old story tells about a woman who was a high school counselor. Consequently, she knew all the signs of emotional upheaval.

            One morning her preteen daughter showed up for breakfast, dragging her feet and rubbing her eyes. The young girl flopped down in her chair and told her mother she was sick of life.

            Immediately, the mother's high school counselor alarms sounded off as she rushed around the breakfast bar, put an arm around her daughter, and began to explain to her why life is worth living.

            The daughter looked up at her with a confused look on her face and said, "Mom!?! I meant LIFE cereal."

Labor!

            In honor of Labor Day, I wanted to share a quote from James Michaels that is as good as a story:

            “When you are my age you don’t have to ask: Are Americans really materially better off than they were in recent past?  Those of us born in the 1920s and with vivid memories of the Depression simply know how much better things are today . . . If he was fortunate enough to have central heating (less than on third of the population did in 1920), the middle class Dad had to pull himself from bed at 4:00 A.M. on cold winter mornings to unbank the furnace and shovel coal; if he overslept, the pipes froze.  But he usually didn’t have to rake leaves or shovel snow.  Not in the 1930s.  That was done by shabby, humble men who knocked at the back door in the mornings asking for a warm meal in return for doing chores.”

            Michaels goes on to remind us that seventy-five years ago the typical workweek was at least sixty hours, but women worked a lot more than that in the home.  The leisure industry didn’t exist because no one had leisure.  For half of the population, the family toilet was in the backyard.  Life expectancy was about fifty-four years. 

            Happy Labor Day!

Source: HUSTLING GOD by M. Craig Barnes, p. 90

The Redheaded Salesperson

            One definition of integrity is doing the right thing when no one is watching. A parable, perhaps a true story, tells of a company that had advertised for a salesperson. They received this reply:

            I am at present selling furniture at the address below. You may judge my sales ability if you will stop in to see me at any time, pretending that you are interested in buying furniture.

            When you come in you can identify me by my red hair. And I will have no way of identifying you.

            Such salesmanship as I exhibit during your visit, therefore, will be no more than my usual workday approach, and not a special effort to impress a prospective employer.

            Hundreds applied for that job; the redheaded furniture salesperson won it. This makes me think of what Paul wrote to the Colossians, Work from the heart for your real Master, for God, confident that you'll get paid in full when you come into your inheritance (Col. 3:23.) THE MESSAGE

           

Source: Bits & Pieces, March 3, 1994

The Job Application

             An old joke goes like this. Several weeks after a young man had been hired, he was called into the personnel director's office.

            "What is the meaning of this?" the director asked. "When you applied for this job, you told us you had five years experience. Now we discovered this is the first job you've ever held."

            "Well," the young man replied, "in your advertisement you said you wanted somebody with imagination."

Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out (Prov. 10:9.) ESV

Somebody’s Watching

I read, years ago, something General Colin Powell wrote. He reflected upon a story someone had once told him. Three guys were hired to dig a ditch. One leaned on his shovel and babbled on about someday owning the company. The second guy grumbled because he felt he was working too many hours for too little pay. The third guy just kept on digging.

Years later, the first ditch digger was still babbling on, hardly lifting his shovel. The second guy feigned an injury and was receiving disability. The third guy owned the company.

Powell took from that story this lesson: someone is always watching. He used it well, when he worked, as a young man, mopping the floors of a local soft-drink bottling plant.

Powell made the decision to be the best mopper he could be. He was doing well and then, one day, he was tested.

A worker mishandled 50 cases of cola and they crashed to the concrete. The floor was covered with the sugary cola. All of this crushed Powell's spirit, but he kept mopping. He literally told himself, “Mop right to left-left to right.”

At last, the summer came to an end. The foreman delivered a short message to Powell, "You mop floors pretty good." The next summer, that same foreman promoted Powell to filling the bottles. The summer after that, Powell was made deputy foreman.

The lesson held, someone was watching.

Whatever Your Hand Finds to Do, Do It With All of Your Might

Two men invented the telephone. One was a professional inventor; the other was a high school teacher, who worked in his spare time.  The reason we hold up Alexander Graham Bell today as the inventor of the telephone is because he beat Elisha Gray to the U. S. Patent office by two hours.

Ira Flatow writes that Elisha Gray’s sketches reveal that he had basically the same idea as Bell. However, as a professional inventor, he did not see his invention as a lucrative endeavor; it was merely a toy. Consequently, he dawdled.  Were Elisha Gray more diligent; perhaps, Don Ameche would have played him in a Hollywood motion picture, rather than Alexander Graham Bell.

It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote, “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” His words remind me of Prov. 14:23, “Hard work always pays off; mere talk puts no bread on the table” [THE MESSAGE]. Procrastination is not a good quality.

This does not merely apply to work. God calls for us to respond to him immediately. The judgment day is coming. We may not have tomorrow.

Furthermore, ignoring God’s teachings hurts us today. God calls us to do as He says—now—not because He wants to rob us of a good time, but so we can experience life to the fullest. He created us and He knows the greatest way to live. Any delay in following God’s instruction, means a delay in recovering from our own self-destruction.

Goodbye, Office

Business writer and cultural observer, Seth Godin, says the office is on its way out. He believes that in ten years, reruns of NBC’s show, THE OFFICE, will be paying homage to a relic.

I have no way of knowing. Certainly, more and more people are working out of their homes. And Godin makes a compelling case. So let’s imagine what he says comes to pass. What will be the implications?

Will there be a greater desire for community, since a source of meeting that need will be eliminated?

Will family relationships become stronger; such as they were in times past when farmers worked at home amongst their family members?

Will people grow more spiritually with the temptations that come with many offices removed?

I believe if God’s people want to practice godly stewardship, it would behoove them to plan for this possible contingency. Remember, it’s always better to be ahead of the wave than to catch it in progress.

Has It Come to That?

There's an old story I first heard from a friend years ago, and I have heard others repeat since. In this story, a family gathers around the bedside of a beloved grandmother, who has undergone major surgery. As the doctors try desperately to save her life, the chief surgeon says to family, "Well, we've done all we can do. We'll just have to wait and see now."

The family asks the doctor, “Is there anything that we can do?”

“Well, you can pray,” the doctor replies.

It so happens that the little old grandmother is still conscious enough to hear what the doctor had said. She moans, “Oh no! Has it come to that?”

I know families who live life like that. They view God as so distant, the thought of asking Him to intervene in human affairs is tantamount to desperation.

What a shame. This understanding is based upon a faulty vision of God. The fact that we have doctors and nurses does not mean God is not in the healing business. Rather, it demonstrates God’s desire to include humanity in His healing work. The field of medicine is not an indication of God’s desire for distance; it is an indication of God’s desire for closeness. God loves people and wants them to partner with Him in His Kingdom work.

Can God heal miraculously apart from the field of medicine? Absolutely, and I believe that sometimes he does. Equally important, God grants people the privilege of healing through the field of medicine.

An understanding like this motivates me to pray more, not less.

The Housekeeper

In your job, how would you like to always be remembered in a negative way? That happened to the White House housekeeper, Henrietta Nesbitt.

Nesbitt was hired by Eleanor Roosevelt, when Franklin Roosevelt was govenor of New York. Later, she joined the family in the White House, after FDR was elected president.

Nesbitt offered the president a very bland diet. One morning, FDR exclaimed to his secretary, Grace Tulley, "Doesn't Mrs. Nesbitt know that there are breakfast foods besides oatmeal? She has served it morning in and morning out for months and months now, and I'm sick and tired of it!"

Later that day, when the secretary appeared, Roosevelt showed her that day’s newspaper inserts displaying various breakfast cereals along with their prices. Then he began his dictation, "Cornflakes! 13 ounce package, 19 cents! Post Tosties! 13 ounce package, 19 cents! Cream of wheat! Two for 27 cents!... now take this gentle reminder to Ms. Nesbitt."

All of this was to no avail. When Roosevelt was running for his fourth term, he joked to his staff, the main reason he wanted to win was to fire Mrs. Nesbitt.

For years now I have seen Henrietta Nesbitt's name in various biographies of Roosevelt. Not one time to remember anything positive written about her. What a terrible indictment. Nesbitt's problem was she forgot who she was serving.

Christians do not have that excuse. Even when we do not like our earthly boss, Paul reminds us that we serve someone even higher:

23Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving (Col. 3:23-24.)

May we daily work for the Lord Jesus.