For those of you who get up to read these essays by 7 am EST, I’m late. Plane was delayed and I got home at 1 am.
Here I am. Five hours of sleep. Nothing prepared. Nothing on my mind.
But I try to write leadership thoughts on Fridays.
So, here is the thought of the day. Works for leaders. Works for parents. For spouses. Even for public speakers 😉
Talk less; Listen more.
I could give examples. But…you get the point. What are you going to do today?
How we receive gifts also tells much about us.
I have been thinking about the encounter of the rich young man with Jesus. The one where Jesus got to the point of his problem. He had too much stuff, and he couldn’t let it go. Maybe he was like a hoarder. Maybe he was like Scrooge McDuck (for those of you old enough to remember) who was mostly pictured sitting in his vault with piles gold coins and sacks of gold coins.
But if someone is going to give generously, then that means someone must receive.
How do you receive?
I learned a long time ago to adjust my wants to reality. Growing up in a family without much money can form you in one of two ways. In my case, I wanted things, but learned that many were beyond budget. So, I adjusted my expectations. On the other hand, I know of people in similar situations who grew up only to crave the things they couldn’t have as children even more than when they were little.
Do we adjust to reality, or do we expect reality to adjust to us?
Maybe we have seen way too many advertisements (and they date back to the early 1800s) of the joyous kid opening presents. And we think that if we can’t capture that picture in reality, then Christmas is ruined. I have even heard pastors equate a joyful Christmas to the number of presents under the tree!
I’m sure for many not receiving the gift, or not receiving enough gifts, is disappointing.
But maybe that is because the anticipation of Christmas is misplaced. It focuses on quantity of presents.
What do I appreciate? I appreciate that someone thought of me.
I bet that is true for most everyone. Except for those whose focus is on the wrong place.
Then it’s time for an attitude adjustment.
“You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” Mark 10
Giving. ‘Tis the season.
The Magi were what passed in that day as combination scientist, astronomer, spiritual seeker. They spotted conditions that told them there was a disturbance in the Force. A baby, but more than a baby.
They traveled maybe 500 miles, maybe 1,500 miles. But they didn’t just pop in an airplane or even a car. It would have been a sizable caravan most likely. Three gifts (we don’t know how many Magi).
How far would you travel under what hardships to give precious and costly gifts?
Well, for the rich young man, not very far. Actually, not at all.
There are people who give when they hear about a specific need. The church building needs a new roof. You just heard an emotional presentation about the plight of children or women somewhere.
Then there are the people whose very life is organized around being generous.
I think maybe Jesus was touching on that idea with the young man. Sure you can follow the commandments. And, yes, that’s not easy. And it is devotional.
Something is lacking. Something called the orientation of your entire life. The status of your heart. Am I focused on me? Am I focused on loving my neighbor? (Remember, that’s Jesus’ second commandment.)
Most of us will give gifts at Christmas. That is no moral wrong. But what drives us? Tradition? Obligation? Generosity?
Can we say, “I give because of what I am”?
Human nature is like a stable inhabited by the ox of passion and the ass of prejudice; animals which take up a lot of room and which I suppose most of us are feeding on the quiet. And it is there between them, pushing them out, that Christ must be born and in their very manger he must be laid – and they will be the first to fall on their knees before him. Sometimes Christians seem far nearer to those animals than to Christ in his simple poverty, self-abandoned to God. — Evelyn Underhill
I love this picture. It captures our inner condition and ties it to the Christmas theme.
Making the mistake of scanning news this morning, I saw yet another example of Christians proudly wearing their prejudices. Why do we make everything political? Even theology?
I figure that to follow Jesus I must study Jesus. How do I know if I am doing what he wants and being the kind of person he wants me to be unless I study?
So I study.
And nowhere do I find Jesus telling me to do or say the things that millions of people who call themselves followers do and say.
Noel Paul Stookey, the “Paul” of folk singing Peter, Paul, and Mary, wrote a song with the title “Hymn.” He talks about a person who shows up at church occasionally and finds things sterile and political. He says about when they passed the collection plate, “I just had time to write a note, and all I said was ‘I believe in you’.”
It is the simple things that are so hard. What inhabits your stable?
Did you ever feel like you’re just spinning around in circles going nowhere?
Unlike the TV ad, I’m going to take this deeper.
There is a project management phrase we used to repeat–the faster I go, the behinder I get.
Sometimes we work hard, and good. We do good work. We follow the rules. People respect us. We have a good life–plenty of “stuff”.
And yet…We can’t get no Satisfaction.
Jesus was approached one day by a young man. “How can I inherit eternal life?” he asked.
You know the rules, follow them. “I have followed every one, faithfully, ever since I was a youth.” (Did we say he was a young man?)
We know he was rich. We know that he was a rule-follower. He probably thought of himself as sinless.
But “satisfaction?” He had none.
That happens to us, doesn’t it?
We really crave relationship. Above all, relationship with God (that’s the “eternal life” part of the question). But something blocks us. Sometimes we can’t put our finger on just what the problem is.
In this man’s life it was his stuff. Jesus advised getting rid of his stuff for the benefit of the poor. Then following. Following means developing a relationship of student to mentor. You learn from your mentor. You emulate your mentor. And you become like your mentor.
Are we having trouble following our mentor/teacher? Developing that learning relationship? Are we not getting that satisfaction?
Then we need help discovering what stuff we’re dragging along with us. Sometimes it’s just that we think we can do it all ourselves. Hint: we can’t. Each of us needs a guide to follow.
You don’t necessarily have to sell everything. That was the problem with this man. But you can use your wealth for good. For example, the Tijuana Christian Mission City of Refuge ministry is in great need of funds to make the last of the changes required by a recent law. It still needs to raise about $20,000 (US). Go to its Facebook page and donate. Thank you.
Did you ever end a phone call where the other person said, “I’ll get right on that and call you back shortly” knowing that there was never going to be a return call?
How about when Jesus was walking somewhere and met 10 individuals with a terrible skin disease? He told them to go show themselves to a priest. That meant that they would be healed of the disease and the priest would give them a certificate of cleanliness. And one of them came back to say thanks. And Jesus said, “Were there not 10 who were healed? Where are the other nine?”
One of them returned to complete the loop with thanks.
I was in my favorite little coffee place this week and recalled that a guy had called me and said he’d see me sometime in the coffee shop for some consulting (for free, of course). But he has never come.
The number of people who have said they would get back to me has numbered in the hundreds in my career in business, church work, and non-profit work.
It’s like an epidemic.
Must be one reason why Jesus said at one point, “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’.
Do what you say; Say what you mean.
A basic rule for getting along in society. Don’t be the person with the reputation of never following up. Be the person who calls when they say they’ll call, otherwise they tell you frankly that it’ll be a while or that they can’t get to it. Better to say “find someone else” than to leave them waiting.
Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition. –W.H. Auden
I love routine. Rise at 5:30 am, read, write, post a marketing message for a local coffee cafe, breakfast, exercise. And so on.
Maintaining a routine while traveling is always tough.
Steve Jobs famously made a trip to Japan and saw how the companies all had employee uniforms. He thought, if I had a uniform, then there is one fewer decision I must make daily. So he always wore a black T-shirt and jeans. Routine. His mind could focus on more important things that what to wear today.
Bill Hybels, senior pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL, tells a story about a man who came up to him after a service and talked about how he had turned his life around. What did you do? “I get up a little earlier in the morning and spend 15 minutes in my favorite chair reading the Bible. Every day,” he replied.
That has become a Willow Creek mantra. “Chair time.” Try it. Even when traveling.
Mihaly Csikszentmihaly studied creative people. He is credited with defining “flow”, that state of being you get into when you are totally engrossed in what you’re doing. “Most creative individuals find out early what their best rhythms are for sleeping, eating, and working, and abide by them even when it is tempting to do otherwise. They wear clothes that are comfortable, they interact only with people they find congenial, they do only things they think are important.”
What is the result of adopting this routine or rhythm of life? “Personalizing patterns of action helps to free the mind from the expectations that make demands on attention and allows intense concentration on matters that count,” concludes Csikzentmihalyi.
Over and over in the New Testament, we read things such as “Jesus, as was his custom” and “Paul, as was his custom.” I’ve always been impressed with the description of the life of Daniel, the prophet, who early on decided upon his diet and took time out from administering a vast empire to pray three times a day.
What’s in your routine?
I have published this slide before, but I thought that some of the points needed an emphasis these days.
Let us consider “More Laughter; Less Anger.”
Some people may say, “But times are bad, we need to express anger at ( fill in your favorite hate here ).” You can’t talk facts to emotion, but we are actually in general much better off than previous generations. Even “poor” people can go to Wal-Mart and buy cheap stuff–but still stuff that the middle class or wealthy have. We live in much larger houses. Most of us have plenty of cars. Many of us have storage sheds either in our back yards or that we rent to hold our stuff.
We can choose to find humor and laugh more.
Let us also consider “More Giving; Less Wanting.”
We want so much stuff. We want higher paying jobs–without putting forth the effort to learn new skills or deepen our knowledge. People who mindfully set aside money to give to specific charities find they can live on the rest adequately. They find that they actually have plenty.
Or as a Buddhist proverb says, “Enough is a feast.”
“More chewing; Less swallowing.” Let’s slow down. Enjoy what we have. We’ll eat less–something most of us need to practice.
We choose these lifestyles. We choose the path of unhealthy negativity. We can also choose the path of health, enjoyment, generosity.
These are all disciplines. We choose to be a better person that people want to be around.
Especially these days, let’s try the More Laughing; Less Anger route. You can choose to let the President-Elect get your emotions riled up one way or the other. Or, you can choose to walk with God secure in the knowledge that we know who wins in the end. And it’s not politics.
I knew a woman who was kind and funny. She got a job as a police dispatcher. Within a couple of years she became negative, cynical, joyless.
She dealt daily with criminals, people with stories about how they wound up on the wrong side of the law, drug dealers, drug users. She seldom saw beauty and truth. There were no random acts of kindness.
I felt so sad.
When I reflect on the last year, one thing stands out–how many people have lost their kindness, their grace toward others, their joy.
I came across this thought while reading through my eclectic information gathering.
How have circumstances affected us?
Have we become more hardened, resentful, afraid?
These actually go together. Fear is at the root of many negative emotions. Fear of loss. Fear of the future. Fear of someone taking my job. Fear of others whom I do not know. Fear of the future.
However, we all know people (I hope) who have grown wise and understanding as they age. They no longer have anything to prove. They see that others have struggles, too. They see evil or foolishness and avoid it. They walk with God.
The Dalai Lama points to a wisdom that we also find throughout the Proverbs. It is our choice.
Every day we arise and we begin making choices. We can fill our minds with words of wisdom. We can fill our minds with the news headlines. Our choice.
We can choose how we react to the news. Do we allow our emotions to go crazy and get all worked up? Do we take a breath and allow the perspective of God to let us see beyond the news.
It’s not that I wish to ignore bad news and act as if it didn’t exist. That is a sign of mental illness. It’s just that I choose what I focus on.
We become what we think about.
We can never know about the days to come
But we think about them anyway
And I wonder if I’m really with you now
Or just chasing after some finer day.Anticipation, Anticipation
Is making me late
Is keeping me waitingCarly Simon
I was still coming out of the season of Thanksgiving–focusing on gratitude–when it hit me like a bug meeting a truck. It’s Advent already. The season of anticipation.
Carly Simon wrote a love song. But the raw emotion is real.
Sure, we know all about Christmas. A billion people who barely know who Jesus is knows about Christmas. They can probably recite the passage in Luke popularized by Linus in the Charley Brown Christmas movie. You know, a little boy was born and placed in a manger.
What if we could imagine not knowing the story, yet? What if we were sitting in the evening every day discussing the possibility of a Messiah–the Anointed One, King?
We realize that we can’t know about the days to come. Not even the end of today. What if we’re just chasing after some finer day?
It’s making me late. It’s keeping me waiting.
I sit in meditation imagining sitting out under the stars of a clear desert night. Staring up, wondering. Are the stories from long ago just fables? Let’s put it in perspective of today. Those stories back then of a coming Messiah were older than the entire length of time of European settlement in America!
Then we can meditate on the story of Jesus. How he gathered people around himself. Taught them. They didn’t understand. The night he went to his death, they still didn’t understand. The day after he died–they still didn’t get it.
Imagine the mixture of anticipation and hopes crushed.
But then they got it.
Anticipation. It makes me late. It keeps me waiting.
Gary Mintchell
Faith Venture 