I agree with Solomon - Part 2

The following wisdom from Solomon is contained in the Bible's book of Proverbs - Chapter 22, verse 1:

"A good name is to be more desired than great wealth,
Favor is better than silver and gold."

I don't know about you, but I sometimes dream about what it might be like to have great wealth. Truth is, I'm already blessed beyond imagination and very well-off by the world's standards. All of my family's needs are more than taken care of and they have been for a very long time (thanks to the Lord blessing us abundantly!). But, living where we do in the north Dallas/Plano area (and/or anywhere else in the United States?), it is sometimes hard for us to remember that. There's always someone (or lots of people?) who appear to have more "wealth" than we do.

I am oftentimes curious about those people who appear to have great wealth. What's that like on a day-to-day basis? What do they do with it? How do they manage it? What's does it feel like to have considerable material and monetary excess beyond what you really need? I wonder? Or, is this idea of great wealth only just a modern day fairy tale - an illusion based on tricks and debt? Is great wealth something that people dream about, but never really ever achieve? Hmmmm... I wonder.

Back to Solomon's words, they say that a good name was to be more desired than great wealth. And that favor is better than silver or gold.

May I remind you that Solomon did in fact have great wealth. He may have been one of the richest men who ever lived on planet earth! So, if he said something about great wealth, he was speaking from first-hand knowledge and experience. He actually had great wealth and knew what he was talking about.

But a good name? That's really better than great wealth? Seems way too simple, doesn't it?

A lot of us might be saying to ourselves about now: "Just let me try great wealth first and then I'll let you know if this guy Solomon knew what he was talking about. Let me experience great wealth for awhile and then I'll tell you if he was telling the truth."

Sometimes we can think we are so smart. Sometimes we can distort our very short lives here on earth, completely magnifying them way beyond their actual importance, to levels that are totally out of proportion. Sometimes we can think that what we are doing right now is somehow more significant than what has happened in all of history. Get serious. While your life is important to many people, and while what you are doing is somewhat significant for right now, very few of us will be remembered in history books 50 years after we are gone. Most of what we are doing and/or experiencing in our individual lives has been experienced before. Maybe numerous times. Don't kid yourself. You and I aren't the smartest people who ever lived. As a matter of fact, Solomon had a corner on that market, too. He was considered the smartest man who ever lived.

But, how much do you value having a good name? Is your name in fact "good?" What does that even mean? Good according to who? And what about favor? Whose favor is better than silver and gold?

I'll have to admit, I am a people-pleaser. I probably fuss more about what other people think about me than I should. Truth is, there is only one person that really matters when it comes to yours and my name being good. If we are going to fuss about anything, it should be about whether we are honoring the Lord of the Universe with our lives, and if others are giving Him the glory and honor He deserves based on our lives and actions. That would be our good name, if you please. Nothing else really matters much at all.

Do you believe that? If you do, what are you going to do to make sure that your name is good with the one who really counts? Whose favor are you going after? In the grand scheme of things there probably isn't anything more important than this. Think about it...

I agree with Solomon (again) - A good name is to be more desired than great wealth, and favor is better than silver or gold.

Health and care and reform

I'm feeling pretty lousy today. I see by the Sunday paper that "Fungus" is really high here in the Dallas area. So, that must be what is causing my allergies to make me feel so bad. Darn fungus...

Isn't it amazing how we can take our health so for granted sometimes? I would dare say that a couple of days ago, I wasn't even thinking about my health - about how bad I felt; about whether I would be able to get some good sleep this afternoon/tonight or not; and/or about when I might start to feel "normal" again, etc. A couple of days ago my health wasn't even on my radar. But today, I am feeling totally out-of-whack and basically unable to concentrate on much of anything else.

I'm ashamed to admit that when I'm not feeling very good, everyone else is supposed to really care a lot about that (and me!). How dare they go about their lives being healthy and living normally when I feel so bad! Don't they realize how bad I feel? Hurrumph!

Too often when someone else's health has been bad, I'm afraid I haven't always been as compassionate or sympathetic as I should have been about that. When your own health is in pretty good shape, it is sometimes pretty hard for us to truly care about someone else's that isn't. Am I the only one out here who has this problem? Am I the only one that is this selfish?

This week my sister, Debb, goes in for brain surgery. She has a large Meningioma. This is a growth connected to her brain - not into her brain, just connected to it. She's known that she's had this benign tumor for several years. But, now it has grown so large that it is pushing out her skull and deforming it. Therefore, they are going to cut open the back of her skull, remove as much of the tumor as they can (hopefully all of it) and then try to put everything back together again (including a titanium plate to replace the part of her skull they cut out). It's a serious medical event and could potentially compromise her otherwise good health. This is something I really care about, and I will be praying in earnest that all the doctors/surgeons have exceptional skill during this surgery. I will also be praying that she is able to fully recover from this and be completely restored to good health once again.

With so much of the news these days filled with the topic of healthcare reform, I am wondering if the greatest reform needed might be in the hearts/minds of all of us towards one another. Maybe it isn't the government or the insurance companies that need to fix what ails us? Maybe it's that we need to start to care more about the health of those around us and reform our way of thinking about who's really responsible for standing by our loved ones and neighbors when they go through trials with their health? Maybe each of us needs to stop whining/fussing so much about our own health and recognize that everyone has times when they won't feel so good? Maybe we all need to figure out how we can care for others, instead of only selfishly focusing on how we feel ourselves?

One thing is for certain. Healthcare reform is needed. But, what the government is offering is not the answer we need. What the insurance companies are offering is not what we need. Each of us just needs to stop long enough to thank God for the good health we already have been blessed with , and then look around for who we can care for that is truly hurting.

Now that's the kind of health and care and reform that will really last in this country.

Your life needs to be sustainable

Sustainable is a huge buzz word these days, especially in the world of architecture and design where my work is. Frankly, I'm really weary of hearing about it. I'm also really tired of being made to feel guilty for doing something I love to do or want to do because it is somehow deemed by "green" folks as not sustainable.

Let me ask you this: Other than creating a lot of news/press about it, plus creating a lot of new jobs for people to monitor/watch how sustainable we all are (or aren't), what exactly has been accomplished by all the buzz about and money spent on sustainable stuff over the past 10-20 years anyway? Maybe it's hard to measure the effects? Maybe we won't know for quite awhile whether our actions and/or changes to them are really making a difference in this regard? But, I digress...

I did hear a good use of the word sustainable at The 2009 Leadership Summit on August 6th. Bill Hybells said, "Your life needs to be sustainable."

This speaker was referring to leaders and how they need to measure what they are doing at all times to make sure that what they are doing can be maintained and/or if the pace/activities they currently are keeping/doing will eventually cause them to fail.

I'm afraid to admit that there have been several times in the past few weeks where I have had to ask myself if my life was sustainable?

There are a lot of needs out there that need addressing. There are a lot of people out there that are hurting. There are many, many places where each of us should be plugging in to make a difference in people's lives. But, your life also needs to be sustainable.

It is so easy to volunteer to start something and to say, "Yes, count me in. I'll help." But, how many times do we volunteer without counting the costs and then as time goes by, we can't keep our commitments because our life really isn't sustainable at that pace?

If you are a "people-pleaser" like me, this just kills you. You want to jump in and be involved in good activities and be a part of something that is successful and really makes a difference in people's lives. But, the nasty little secret about involvement is that if you start, but don't continue and follow-through completely on your commitment, it is almost worse than if you hadn't signed up to participate in the first place.

Our church is currently looking for 500 mentors to commit to being a part of a Title One school student's life. The commitment is for 30 minutes per week for the whole school year. Part of me really wants to do this. Part of me is somewhat afraid to jump on the bandwagon and commit. Why? Because statistics show that students who have had mentors in the past who started, but failed to fulfill their commitment as mentors, actually suffer greatly from those brief commitments. They actually become a negative in their lives (versus a positive). How terrible to be somewhat responsible for causing a young child to have a worse situation in their life because I failed to follow-through on my small commitment to them.

That is why I am asking myself today, "Is my life sustainable?" With my church, family, job/career and other commitments I've already agreed to and/or are in the middle of and can't remove myself from, have I crossed over into a non-sustainable condition? What impact will my agreeing to do this next thing have on people if for some reason I can't follow through and do it fully and with excellence? What do I need to give up in order to make room for this new commitment? What impact will giving up another commitment have on the people who are counting on me fulfilling that commitment if I take on this new one?

Your life needs to be sustainable. Is it? Think about it...

Greatness AND Weakness

The origin of the thoughts I am about to write probably came from some things I heard at The 2009 Leadership Summit on Friday of this week. Specifically, one of the speakers, David Gergen, in an interview with Bill Hybells spoke words from his book Eyewitness to Power, wherein he tells of the experiences of working very closely with four different American presidents in the White House.

Gergen was asked what he thought was the greatness of each of the four presidents he served. For Nixon he said it was his strategic mind; for Ford he said it was his decency; for Reagan he said it was his hopeful/optimistic outlook; and for Clinton he said it was his resiliency.

Gergen was also asked what he thought was the weakness of each of the four presidents he served. For Nixon he said it was his demons and the dark side of his life; for Ford he said it was his naivete and the fact that he didn't fully understand that politics was a rough sport; for Reagan he said it was his occasional detachment from important details; and for Clinton he said it was his severe character flaws.

Wherever we are, each of us can have moments of greatness. Likewise, wherever we are, each of us will have areas of weakness.

In our human condition, we cannot completely escape areas of weakness. Gergen said that maturity in leadership was a matter of coming to grips with our flaws, and then making sure to put adequate protections in place against them.

Some people who exhibit greatness have been successful in doing this; many have not.

Fast forward to the somewhat heart-breaking news of yesterday regarding the Texas Rangers' superstar baseball player Josh Hamilton. A player whose talent and skills have aptly been described as greatness by many. You can find out more about it on the front page of the Sports Section in the Dallas Morning News today.

Apparently, for one night in January during Major League Baseball's spring training in Arizona, Hamilton willingly slipped back into some of his old lifestyle patterns that previously got him in trouble (involving alcohol and partying), and actual photos from that not-so-flattering brief episode in his life appeared on the internet this week fully exposing his weakness.

Even though he and others had put adequate protections in place to help him keep his areas of weakness in check, he chose to literally "drive right through the stop signs" and slip back into the dangers of his areas of weakness anyway. Now the whole world knows.

However, the model/example that Josh Hamilton displayed in handling this story with the news/sports media is perhaps the best part of his true greatness. He admitted his error. He didn't try to hide it. He declared that what he had done back in January was wrong and asked all those he hurt and/or disappointed by his actions for forgiveness. He openly acknowledged that he still has an area of weakness with alcohol. He admitted that when he lets himself get out from under the protections that are in place to help him with this area of weakness, he will fail.

So what? What's the message here? Well, for me there are several things.

- All of us can have moments of greatness; look for these opportunities to shine. Use the talents you have been given and don't waste them.
- All of us have areas of weakness. Those areas don't necessarily disqualify you from greatness, but you must acknowledge them and then seek to protect yourself from these areas. If you don't, they will totally wipe out any moments of greatness you may have had in the past or will have in the future.
- All of us need to openly admit failure when it happens and seek the forgiveness of those we've hurt/disappointed when our areas of weakness have overshadowed our moments of greatness.

One final word from David Gergen. Oh, if only we would hear what he has to say and apply it to our everyday lives in this country. He said that we need to be much more forgiving and less invasive in people's private lives. But, we need to be very demanding in their public lives.

Greatness and weakness. What are you going to do with the talents you have been given? What are you going to do to protect yourself from areas where you are weak?

There really is no such thing as "free"

It was my father-in-law, F. B. Anderson, who first taught me the lesson that there really is no such thing as "free." His blunt words hurt at the time he said them, but they have stuck with me longer than I would have imagined. It was a lesson in economics I needed to learn. It's a lesson many of us need to learn today.

You see, Ellen and I were young married "kids" living in our first home that happened to only be four blocks away from my in-laws. We were learning all sorts of things about the responsibilities of owning our own home (versus renting), including how and where to buy stuff on a small budget, etc. I remember somewhat "bragging" to F. B. about a seemingly smart purchase I had made of some bags of mulch for our yard. I told him that I had bought them at such and such a place (I forget the name of it now), and that I had purchased the first bag for "x" dollars and the next one for only a penny! Almost "free" I told him. He looked at me with a look that quickly said to me, "You poor dumb kid!" And then told me this: "All they are doing is selling you the one bag for about what it costs them for two, and then letting you believe you are getting the second bag for only a penny." Boy, did I ever feel stupid.

We all could use a little bit of my father-in-law's old-fashioned, basic economic wisdom today. There really is no such thing as "free."

Have you noticed how today people expect a lot of things to be "free" and/or cost them very little? Whatever happened to the time-tested principles of basic economics in this country? Have we all forgotten what we learned in school about economics (or were we even ever taught the basics of how free-market economies work?)?

This is how I remember basic economics being explained to me. If I make something of value, I can then offer it for sale. It will sell if there is a demand for that product and I have priced it correctly. I expect that by selling my product at a fair price, I will recover my costs and still make a profit. The profit I make on each purchase will help me make more and better products in the future. In a very simple sense, that is how our free-market economy works.

Unfortunately, it seems as though many of us have forgotten these basics. How long do you think people can stay in business if they make products and/or offer goods and services but don't get any money back in return? Who is going to pay their bills and the people who work for them if they give everything away? Isn't it kind of naive and unrealistic to think that we can all get stuff for "free?"

Thanks, F. B. I haven't forgotten the lesson you taught me long ago. There really is no such thing as "free." I sure hope more people learn this lesson, too.

Are we living Nineteen Eighty-Four?

I had to run a quick errand the other day on the way to work. I needed to stop by a wholesale plumbing supply place to pick up something that we had already ordered and paid for. As I waited for the man behind the counter to locate and then retrieve my faucet so that I could be on my way, I thought to myself, "Are we living Nineteen Eighty-Four?" Here's a few reasons why I'd say that.

You see, there were three other gentlemen and a lady in that big room besides me (and the man helping me). Each of them had already started their work day. Each of them was passively staring at their computer screen, apparently not very interested or engaged in their work. Each of them looked like they weren't quite sure what they were supposed to be doing. They definitely were not talking to each other (or to me, for that matter). Each one appeared to have a relatively sad expression on their face also. Within the same big room was a big screen television, mounted high on the wall and blaring annoyingly. It was Matt Lauer on one of the morning shows interviewing some relatively young whiz kid (?) who had written something about what we might all have to do when gas in this country hits $20 a gallon. This guy was outlining the changes that will be progressively required of us as we march toward this outrageous (but arbitrary and imaginative) cost for gasoline. Let me tell you, it was just plain depressing!

By the way, where we live, gas prices seem to be going down lately versus rising. So, one might ask, "Why was this considered newsworthy and made out to be a big story?" Hmmmm.

That's when I thought to myself again, "Are we living Nineteen Eighty-Four?"

Some of you reading this are probably scratching your heads now and wondering to yourself, "What in the world is he talking about?"

Well, 60 years ago, an English writer by the name of George Orwell published an incredible book entitled "Nineteen Eighty-Four." When I was in high school in the late 60's/early 70's, everyone was required to read it. It's a fascinating book! If you haven't ever read it, you really should.

Basically, Orwell wrote a dystopian novel - that's opposed to a utopian one. It focuses on a repressive, totalitarian regime set in the future - 1984. The story follows the life of one seemingly insignificant man, a character named Winston Smith, who as a civil servant was assigned the task of perpetuating the ruling regime's propaganda by falsifying records and political literature. Smith gradually grows disillusioned with his meager existence as a civil servant. He eventually begins a rebellion against "the system," leading to his eventual arrest and torture.

Undoubtedly, lots of you have heard about some of the concepts from this book. Frequently people will refer to something as being "Orwellian." Or, perhaps you've heard the terms "Big Brother" and/or "the Thought Police?" They are from Orwell's book.

Not to be an alarmist here, but there are times when I really get concerned about how much power cable news media (not to mention news/information in print and on the Internet) has over some of us. Just like the people I briefly encountered in that wholesale plumbing supply place the other day, sometimes we just sit and involuntarily take it all in - whatever the media decides to give us, we accept. Sadly, some of us frequently believe it all to be true, too.

These days, there are multiple televisions blaring in many public places - usually tuned-in to CNN or some other 24/7 cable news channel? They command a lot of our attention and wield a lot of power over some of us. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell called that "Newspeak," and they even had their own language, called "Ingsoc." They also had the "Ministry of Plenty," responsible for rationing and controlling food and goods; the "Ministry of Peace," responsible for perpetuating war; and the "Ministry of Love," responsible for the identification, monitoring, arrest and torture of dissidents, real or imagined (just to name a few).

Orwell died from the complications of tuberculosis not long after his book was published. In a closing statement to the New York Times Book Review back in 1949 he had these parting words to say: "...totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere."

Are we living Nineteen Eighty-Four? Think about it.

Do I want to be brave or safe?

The past couple of months have been very, very interesting for me. Sometimes you go through times like this and later look back on them and declare them to be a series of seminal moments in your life. This may be one of those times. I'm not sure yet, but it could very well be. How else do you explain some of the unique events and relatively unexplained "God moments" that have occurred in my life?

It may have all started by reading Mark Levine's very compelling book Liberty and Tyranny, or it may have been by plowing through Richard Stearns' fantastic book The Hole in Our Gospel. It may have continued with possibly a once-in-a-lifetime trip to New Zealand in late June to attend a leadership conference on "Soul Care," or a quick business trip to Ottawa, Canada, soon after returning from down under to dialogue with several colleagues there. As I contemplated and prayed for our daughter Katie's incredible and significant mission trip to India planned for this November and Nathan's mission trip and time spent at an orphanage in Chihuahua, Mexico, this past week, I began to realize that I needed to start paying much more attention to the message I seemed to be getting from God. Finally, an unusual occurance while at lunch with a friend this past Friday, and then finishing Gary Haugen's terrific book Just Courage this morning seemed to tie it all together, forcing me to face a really, really tough question for my life. I believe that God orchestrated all of this for me, and has been continually trying to help me "get it" through these experiences. Even one of the pastors at our church asked this same question of all of us at services on Friday night - Do I want to be brave or safe?

According to Haugen's book, all followers of Christ need to clarify important choices in life. And he believes that for those who have received the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ, the choice of the age for us is this: Do we want to be brave or safe?

According to Haugen, followers of Christ need to understand that they simply can't be both. He says that there are four things that hold us back from being brave versus being safe - Comfort, Security, Control and Success.

If we are more concerned about our own personal comforts in this life, we will be much less prepared to experience the adventures God may have planned for us.

If we are more preoccuppied with our own personal security in this life, we will be much less likely to step out in faith, trusting God to carry us through to the other side of the moment.

If we are so into controlling our own lives and the environments that we find ourselves in, we will be less likely to see and experience the miracles that God is already performing in our midst.

If we are so driven by achieving success in this life, we will probably miss out on experiencing a deep and abiding knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Do you want to be brave or safe?

I'm hoping that God is now moving me closer and closer to being brave. I would hate to miss out on the abundant life by only thinking "safe."