Recently in Work and Life Category

Pure genius, this - worth watching for the sheer brilliance of taking a potentially difficult situation - and turning it for great effect (much like watching a top batsman use the pace of a fast bowler to hit a six) - but the message is bang on too.

Obama was dealing with the spin created by the break with tradition created by the refusal of Arizona state officials to grant him an honourary degree when he spoke at an awards ceremony at the university - saying that he hadn't achieved enough yet to deserve one! Here's how he knocked it over the boundary...

I've been reading - for the umpteenth time - a book that's been a constant companion over my (very nearly) ten years as a pastor. Eugene Peterson is a prolific author (best known for his version of the Bible: The Message), but at his best, I think, when reflecting on ministry and leadership.

This particular book, subtitled "Reflections on Christian Ministry" was originally called The Gift, but for reasons unknown, it's now The Contemplative Pastor.

Gordon MacDonald - a remarkable Christian writer and speaker - writing in the current edition of Leadership magazine:

Walking one day with a wise old man ...I asked what now seems to be a stupid question: "What should be my priority? My family or the Lord's work?"

It seemed an appropriate question then. I'd grown up in a Christian tradition that made it clear that the "Lord's work" always came first.
...
His answer? "Gordon, your family is the Lord's work."

MacDonald's contention is that our "Loved Ones" (whether spouse, kids, closest friends) form the most healthy base environment that stops us "thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought" - when you're with the people that treat you as you - and love you just the same come success or failure - then that's both healthy perspective and life-giving encouragement.

And no less true as a basic human need and safety-harness for those who run their own business, are trying for the top of their career ladder or stride the TV stage - if we can't love and be loved by our 'Loved Ones', what sort of success in the rest of life can we really be?

Very simply, today, a wonderful thought-provoking quotation (thanks to Paul on the Prodigal Kiwi blog) from Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Jesuits in the 1500's):

...insisting on God's presence in all things, denied a group of Jesuit students in his day, permission to prolong their morning meditation time. Instead he reminded them that rather than spending lengthy time in prayer:

"...they should strive to seek the presence of God in all things - for instance, in association with others, in walking, looking, tasting, hearing, thinking, indeed, in all that they do. It is certain", he said, "that the majesty of God's presence, activity, and essence" is in all of these things.

What have I missed today in my busy-ness (or even in my too-long-praying... if only!) of the majesty of God's presence, activity and essence in the world I've tramped through at high speed?

Do you remember the remarkable story of the team who last year gave a woman a new windpipe - and hence new life - using her own stem cells? Thirty-five years earlier, the lead scientist/surgeon, Professor Anthony Hollander, had written to Blue Peter, saying:

...he had a "strange" belief that he knew how to "make people or animals alive".

The letter, which by his own admission today was "eccentric", went on to ask the programme to help him acquire the necessary materials to carry out these life-saving tasks. The shopping list included a "model of a heart split in half" and "tools for cutting people open".

Every child who wrote got a personal reply - and thankfully, he was no exception. The reply gave him just enough encouragement not to give up his dream... and more than thirty years of investing his life in the pursuit of his dream, he's beginning to see the fruit of it.

There are special individuals, I guess, whose lives we look on with some wonder and awe, who just seem to know what they're meant to do with their days and never waver.

Most of us feel rather that we have fallen in to what we're doing - some of us even that what we are doing is a proof of our failure to find that 'call'.

But the sermon I preached on Sunday, from Jesus' Parable of the Talents (in Matthew 25) puts a lie to that sense that unless we have a clear "one call" purpose, we're no use to God.

The key contrast between the first two servants - who are called "good and faithful" - and the third wasn't so much their investment strategy as their relationship with the Master. Did they see their 'talent' (or gold) as a gift to be invested for a return, or a burden they'd rather not be responsibile for? Did they trust the Master enough to take a risk, or sulkily complain that he'd probably be too hard on them if they even tried?

If my life is a gift - if each hour, day, week, month, year is a gift - then the question of where and how I invest it for a "good return" hinges on whether I recognise it as such (a gift), not whether I turn out to be a great surgeon or philanthropist. God has no hierarchy of professions, but a family of children who look to him as their gift-giving Father and live accordingly - whether that be in unemployment, parenting, banking, teaching, friendship, fund-raising, writing...

What return will the investment of my day bring today... and for whom?

It's been striking how news reports about the 'snow days' we've just (for the most part) enjoyed have talked about the 'cost to the economy' (though their estimates vary wildly from £1.2 to £3billion!) of so many people taking time off work.