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There are many things I don’t enjoy. One of them is taking my vehicle to the dealership to have it serviced. Then there’s the wait for a ride back to the office (or sit in the waiting room drinking terrible coffee). I lose the rhythm in my day.
This past week was an absolute nightmare on Wednesday morning. I dropped the vehicle off and waited thirty minutes for the shuttle to get a ride back to the office. When I got to the office I was already thirty minutes late for a meeting, only to realise I had to leave at 11am for a meeting in London but wouldn’t have my vehicle! Our two staff kindly agreed to hike back to the dealership and get my un-serviced vehicle while I looked after my meeting at the office. THEN, when I finally left for London I was an hour late, and a call led me to turn around and come home because they figured the meeting would be nearly finished by the time I got there! And all because my vehicle needed to be serviced!
But I know it’s a necessary process, otherwise the vehicle will get ‘sick’ and have far more problems later on.
Sometimes I feel like my vehicle! There’s plenty of slug in my thoughts and grit in my spirit. But when I get together with God’s people, I get a tune-up!
A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog. - Jack London
In a recent report by Linda Duxbury of Carleton University’s School Of Business. Ottawa, and Chris Higgins of the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, London, entitled “Work-Life Balance in the New Millennium: Where are We? Where Do we need to Go?,” the authors claimed that many Canadians are finding it very difficult to balance their roles in life as employer, employee, parent and spouse. This shows up in increased workloads, more stress, declining physical and mental health, increased absenteeism, lower job satisfaction and lower commitment to employers. Duxbury says: “Our data demonstrate that the inability to balance work and family life is everyone’s problem. It hurts the employer, the employee, the employee’s colleagues, the employee’s family and Canadian society as a whole.” Estimated absenteeism from work-life conflict costs Canadian firms almost $3 billion a year, which results in extra visits to the doctor adding $ 425million annually to the cost of health care.
Hence, this whole thing of being a great worker is a very live issue in our day and time. If things aren’t working well in the work world it can be damaging to our lives and if we buy into Linda Duxbury’s conclusion, all of Canada, all of life will be affected in one way or another.
THE POWER OF GIVING THANKS
Something to reflect on as you sit down to your Thanksgiving dinner:
If you had been a Pilgrim, would you have given thanks?
Consider what they had been through, the men and women who broke bread together on that first Thanksgiving in 1621.
They had uprooted themselves and sailed for America, an endeavor so hazardous that published guides advised travelers to the New World, "First, make thy will." The crossing was very rough and the Mayflower was blown off course. Instead of reaching Virginia, where Englishmen had settled 13 years earlier, the Pilgrims ended up in the wilds of Massachusetts. By the time they found a place to make their new home - Plymouth, they called it - winter had set in.
The storms were frightful. Shelter was rudimentary. There was little food. Within weeks, nearly all the settlers were sick.
"That which was most sad and lamentable," Governor William Bradford later recalled, "was that in two or three months’ time, half of their company died, especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other diseases.... There died sometimes two or three of a day."
When spring came, Indians showed them how to plant corn, but their first crops were dismal. Supplies ran out, but their sponsors in London refused t...
Peter Drucker offers insightful guidance to the church when he calls leadership a peak performance by one who is "the trumpet that sounds a clear sound of the organizations’ goals." His five requirements for this task are amazingly reliable and useful for those who dare to lead churches:
(1) a leader works;
(2) a leader sees his assignment as responsibility rather than rank or privilege;
(3) a leader wants strong, capable, self-assured, independent associates;
(4) a leader creates human energies and vision;
(5) a leader develops followers’ trust by his own consistency and integrity.
H.B. London, Jr. and Neil B. Wiseman, Pastors at Risk, Victor Books, 1993, pp. 227-228.
TRUSTING DOCTORS, TRUSTING GOD
Not many people enjoy going to the doctor, but according to Reuters, in 1994, one London accountant to that to an extreme. The 63-year-old man needed bladder surgery, but he couldn't overcome his fear of doctors and hospitals. So he self-reliantly did what had to be done. He tried to perform the surgery upon himself. Tragically he got an infection and died. The coroner said, "Unfortunately, his drastic remedy went wrong. A simple operation would have solved the problem."
Just as many don't trust doctors and hospitals, many people wont trust God. In their self-reliance, they destroy themselves.
OUR NEED FOR PAIN
There is no tougher dilemma in the Christian life than the problem of pain. It could be the pain of broken relationship, the pain of rejection, or the pain of insults. Or it could just be plain old physical pain. Nothing tests the faith like pain.
It was physical pain that became a life's work for a man named Dr. Paul Brand. Perhaps nobody studied pain like Dr. Brand.
I became acquainted with his work through the writing of one of my favorite authors, Phil Yancey. He and Dr. Brand wrote several books together including, In His Image, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, and The Gift of Pain.
Dr. Brand died in 2003 at the age of 89. I want to read a little bit from an article in Christianity Today about him:
"Born to missionary parents in the mountains of southwestern India in 1914, Brand attended London University, where he met his wife, Margaret Berry. The two surgeons returned to Vellore, India, to teach at the Christian Medical College and Hospital. While working as the school's first Professor of orthopaedics and hand research, Brand pioneered surgical work with those suffering from Hansen's disease, a bacterial infection more commonly known as leprosy. He was the first surgeon to use reconstructive surgery to correct deformities caused by the disease in the hands and feet, and developed many other forms of prevention and healing from the disease.
"Before Brand, it was widely believed that those suffering from Hansen's disease lost their fingers and feet because of rotting flesh. Instead, Brand discovered, such deformities were due to the loss of ability to feel pain. With treatment and care, he showed, victims of the disease could go indefinitely without such deformities.
It was on this issue that Brand's work with Hansen's disease met with his theological reflections on what he viewed as 'the most problematic aspect of creation: the existence of pain.' Pain, Brand believed, was not antithetical to life, but a requisite for it. God designed the human body so that it is able to survive because of pain,' he later wrote."
Dr. Brand's research helped him form a theology of pain. He compared the body's need for pain, to alert it to danger, to the soul and the spirit's need for pain to alert it to danger and help it to survive.
You see, as Christians, we believe, that our trials, our pain, our deepest hurts, have a purpose beyond our comprehension. This dovetails nicely with what we find in the opening pages of the book of James.
(From a sermon by Daniel Darling, The Purpose of Your Pain, 2/2/2011)
PRAYER DOESN'T CHANGE GOD, IT CHANGES ME
In a scene from Shadowlands, a film based on the life of C.S. Lewis, Lewis has returned to Oxford from London, where he has just been married to Joy Gresham, an American woman, in a private Episcopal ceremony performed at her hospital bedside. She is dying from cancer, and, through the struggle with her illness, she and Lewis have been discovering the depth of their love for each other. As Lewis arrives at the college where he teaches, he is met by Harry Harrington, an Episcopal priest, who asks what news there is. Lewis hesitates; then, deciding to speak of the marriage and not the cancer, he says, "Ah, good news, I think, Harry. Yes, good news."
Harrington, not aware of the marriage and thinking that Lewis is referring to Joy’s medical situation, replies, "I know how hard you’ve been praying .... Now, God is answering your prayer."
"That’s not why I pray, Harry," ...
SOWING AND REAPING
There is a famous (and doubtless apocryphal) story about Horatio Bottomley, the politician and convicted fraudster, who was stitching mailbags in prison when a chaplain caught sight of him.
"Sewing, Bottomley?" said the priest.
"No," he replied. "Reaping."
So too all of us, sooner or later.
("The Times", London)
Probably never heard of Hetty Green. She died in 1916 and left an estate with an estimated value of $100 Million Dollars(not pesos and not 1960 but 1916). ?Hetty regularly ate cold oatmeal because it cost too much to heat it. ?Her son had his leg amputated because she took so long to get him adequate care because she was looking for a free clinic.?Hetty died in the midst of an argument over milk, she argued that skim was best because it was the cheapest.?She was wealthy but she lived like a PAUPER. She never enjoyed nor benefited from the riches that were hers.??A second person I heard about lived on the West Coast of America living in poverty until one day he found out that he was the only living heir to a British Nobleman. What do you think this guy did when he found out? Went to the clothing store and bought the best suit he could find, bought a 1st class ticket to London and returned to England in style! ?HE BELIEVED WHAT HE HAD BEEN TOLD WAS TRUE AND HE BEGAN TO ACT UPON IT!!!
Posted by Guy McGraw at Sermon Central www.sermoncentral.com
