Glory

There are trees

indisposed

weighed down with the fruit of misplaced desires.

And then there are trees

who have found glory...

whose roots grow deep in the remoteness of God.

Phil 3:3 "...(we) glory in Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh."

Every Once in a Great While Advertisers Get it Right

Every once in a great while advertising gets it right. I love this one...

Chevy Commercial

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2011/11/sons-buy-back-beloved-chevy-that-dad-sold-to-pay-for-college/1

Living Carelessly

The Hebrew word for trust can at times be translated as careless. (It can also be translated a few other words but I find this one particularly interesting.) Trust being synonymous with careless. Hmmm... in other words, when you are in a trusted relationship you don’t have to worry about how to take care of yourself because your friend is worried about it.

The older I get the more I realize how difficult it is to find a friend you can be careless with. Proverbs tells us to be cautious in friendship. I didn't get that so much a decade or two ago. When it was time for a friendship to dissolve or part ways it was more difficult for me. I've always said that friendships are formed for a reason, a season or life. But it's taken me a while to learn it first hand, embrace it and be prepared. Oh, and that's usually what it takes... a while... and then you learn to metabolize the friendship in a healthy way. Be energized with the good. Eliminate the bad. Ultimately keeping your eyes on Jesus, a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Ten Rules for Being Human

Someone's always making a list. Here's one for Being Human.

The Great Recycler

God is the original Recycler. Look at Nature. Nothing is exhausted in Natures’ original use. The leaves falling from the tree become the mulch from which plants grow to create more leaves. The fire clears out the old and overgrown and paves the way for new growth. Everything is connected and beauty is in the seasonal.

The world’s trash is a reminder that we are the anti-recycler. A product is created for a specific function. Once the function is consumed the product becomes a liability. Can the discarded plastic container give life back to the soil? Can the old computer monitor breathe oxygen back into the air?

We shine in our creating, in our startups, in our short-term solutions. We don’t do so great with our end of use, post-consumption ideas, with our view of death.

Think about it… you don’t like to think of the end of your ideas. You don't deal well with the concept of finality. And when you do, you seldom imagine the benefits of the end.

Jesus said, “Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal.” John 12

Your hope will whither.
Your dream will die.
You will be broken.

It all reads so morbid so you’re off to find a blog that’s considerably more positive and you miss it again.

The Recycler says, “To win you must lose. To live you must die.”

Ownership

Someone asked me recently to give my opinion on why their life wasn’t ‘working better’. I responded with what I think is likely your number one issue as well…

Ownership. You get ownership all wrong.

You think you own what you don’t. And you seldom own the things you should.

Many of us don’t own our houses, our cars, or our possessions. (The bank or the credit card co owns them.) Nevertheless, we act like we do. Even if we didn’t finance our possessions the further point here goes deeper than just dollars. In a classic understatement I would point out that there is simply too much energy, emotion and attention paid to our possessions. Yet, we love possessions. Because…

We are possessive.

Meanwhile, what happens is the stuff ends up possessing us.

To borrow from Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club or Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich or Gandhi or Jesus.

And then there are the things we should be owning and spending our energy on… our motives, problems, needs, wants, blindspots, our issues and our faults. These are the areas we should be working on.* Yet, we divert attention, we create excuses. We look the other way. Because…

We don’t easily own our faults.

Have you ever tried to get someone to own up to something they did wrong? I have. I have three children. With children though, excuses are expected. They haven’t developed the maturity yet to understand that the sooner they admit fault, ask for forgiveness and try to work on their problems the sooner life starts to ‘work better’ for them. But, of course, that’s the problem… many adults haven’t learned this either. Getting them to own up to something is like backing a wild animal into a corner. Many of us would rather die with our excuses than own them.

This is all a part of our DNA. Remember some of the first conversation recorded? God says to Adam after he eats the forbidden fruit, “What were you thinking?” (And Adam thinks to himself, “I don’t know why I did that. I should just admit it and ask for forgiveness. Man, I feel really bad.) But then he opens his mouth and says, “The woman you put here with me… she made me do it.” Adam in a few short words blames God and then Eve rather than owning up.

Well, you see where this is all going. It’s time to take some inventory. What are you owning? What is owning you? What excuses are you making? If you want life to ‘work better’ you’ll have to wrestle with all this. It’s worth it!

* Oh, I should mention here that I’m not talking strictly about strengths and weaknesses of your personality, giftedness or aptitude. Marcus Buckingham has a lot of great stuff to say along these lines that I agree with whole-heartedly. What I’m referring more to is the inability to admit culpability in why your life is not working better. Hope you see the difference in the two.