365 – Page 17 – Watch. Stand. Pray.

113 – Case for Work Ethic

Working—prioritizing employment over enjoyment—limits one’s time, but so does unemployment. When you have a job schedule to keep, you can’t go to the beach and surf whenever you feel a passing whim to do so. But, when you don’t have money, you can’t ever surf because you can’t afford a surf board.

But, a good, strong work ethic is not only about employment—working for someone else; a work ethic is about self-respect. Work ethic is an intrinsic motivation—to have dignified pride in one’s own effort and accomplishment—a reward that exists on the inside as a “good feeling” for having achieved something noble and worthwhile. The intrinsic motivation for a good work ethic is well told in the adage, “Work is good for the soul.”

The intrinsic motivation for a good work ethic is, or course, exploited by employers. It’s overplayed and underpaid more often than not. But, counterfeits are only made of things of value. Paul did not lie when he told slaves to work as if for Christ since Christ would, indeed, reward them for their work beyond what any employer could ever pay—just as much as Paul didn’t lie when he told slave masters to treat their slaves with respect since Jesus is the master of all. Thanks to Biblical teaching like this, the freedom of Jesus entered a world of slavery like a healthy virus and eventually abolished slavery altogether.

The moral of the story is: Work for Jesus.

But, there are also practical arguments for a good work ethic. Societies where people take personal pride in their work outperform societies who regard labor with contempt.

Your job doesn’t need to be your dream job, but nor do you need to hate your job in order to strive for more. Always seek to improve yourself, including doing a good job right where you are, including achieving other goals so you can move on from where you are. Do well across the board and bless God for the road you’re on that will lead you to better lands.

Your own opportunities are interlaced with others in your economy. When everyone does good work, that’s better for everyone.

114 – Talk It Through

If you keep your peace, you give up all claim to complain about being ignored. If you don’t make a fair case in your favor, you have no right to appeal. If someone doesn’t agree with you, but you don’t let them know, you are a coward to make known your final decision after the fact.

Learn to identify people with these “quietly hot tempers”, who don’t speak their minds, but then want to flee across the ocean to give their rebuttal where no one can dissent or object. These are revenge-driven weaklings. Do not be one and do not work with them. Their lives will be petty and small as will be the things they complain about.

Only hardship can teach them; do not try to counsel them. Let them be alone and constantly extend the one thing they lack: ongoing relationship. Send them a Christmas card every year. Drop off a box of blueberries when blueberries are in season. Extend benign, reasonable, harmless, and normal acts of an average friend and neighbor. Make sure such people know they are not alone. Don’t give up on them the way they pretend to give up on the rest of the world. And, don’t ever even once invite their wrath of one-way silence by trying to solve a disagreement in a useful manner. Just be a non-threatening friend from the closest distance they accept.

But, you yourself, never become that person. Speak your mind—kindly and diplomatically of course. Act with dignity in every way that you can. But, give people a chance to reason with you. Allow everyone the opportunity to persuade you. You don’t know everything. Even if the other guy is wrong, allowing him to speak persuasively—and engaging him in discussion while he does—will you help to strengthen your own opinion if nothing else.

Take the high road where disagreements are concerned. Be strong enough to welcome dissent. Let people know where they stand with you, simply for their information and without being hostile. Let others tell you where you stand without feeling resented. Thick-skinned, strong-standing people, after all, are naturally more effective and have few worthy adversaries to contend with.

115 – Charm, Wit & Tact

Never fall for the motto of the Georgian rhetoric psychopath, “It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it.” It’s why you say it.

Tact and charm begin with genuine live in your heart. Without that, all other advice on charm and tactfulness will only make one come across as a deceitful snake. However, once you have love…

Some things are obvious, evident. Those are things you should never say because, well, they “go without saying”. If you state the obvious, people will think something is wrong with you, either that you are hiding something or don’t know about life or are just trying to flatter.

Other things must be said. Especially in English, we communicate with the assumption that we all expect new ideas. If one person knows what another person mans to say, there is no point in conversation because there would be no progress, whether in exchange of ideas, technology, business growth, or anything else worth discussing. When you do indeed need to communicate an idea, provide enough detail that people know what you mean. For example, don’t overuse pronouns to a point where the listener doesn’t know where the pronouns point to. My mother would often say, in many occasion, “I know that you know what you are talking about, but I haven’t a clue. Start over, but don’t begin with the word ‘they’.”

There is a time to presume what is evidently self-evident and a time to state the idea that no one considered; know the difference. This is a knowledge you will never stop learning.

You can say almost anything if you have a twinkle in your eye and a sheepishly childish grin in your face. When wrong or in those times you accidentally step on toes, be humble. When you cause an injury, own it. When you don’t, be the Good Samaritan who helps someone else’s victim.

When you must confront someone, twinkle, grin, and be the large, gentle giant in charge. If people love your results, and you break neither skin, bones, nor feelings, it won’t matter which silly protocols you may have to break. You don’t even need to smile if you have enough love.

1 Corinthians 13

116 – God the Repayer

When something gets taken from us, God pays it back from His vast wealth. It doesn’t matter how it was lost. Whatever we lose, God can give back and restore a thousand times.

Even sickness, injury, or death of a loved one—God can heal any infirmity, any injury, and whether not or later, God is the resurrection.

God does not “replace” what we lose, he “repays”. The original is still gone. No one can replace a lost loved one, but God brings us new friends and family to fill the space left by whoever isn’t around anymore. Our new family members are just as filled with life and the need for our love as whomever we lost.

God told Israel through the prophet Joel, just before the punishment of Babylon’s invasion, that He would restore the crops that the locusts came and ate. After Job humbled himself before God, he received all his wealth back two fold and started a new family whom he loved very much.

Everyone experiences loss in this life sooner or later. No one dies without God’s approval. No harm comes to us without first passing through the approving, loving, guiding hands of our Father in Heaven.

Even before God takes something away from us—or allows it to be taken away—He already has His plan to restore it to us. Our role in repayment is to seek Him, to grow our hearts to be more loving, and to understand our humble circumstances, no matter who we are.

Jesus described God the Father as a keeper of a vineyard. Pruning is a painful part of healthy growth. Just as a seed must die before it can sprout, just as winter makes trees grow their roots deep in search of water, God takes things from us as part of His master plan for us to become mature and strong in wisdom, skill, knowledge, and love.

We don’t always live in seasons of loss. Sometimes God calls us to be His instrument through which He repays what was taken from someone else. Whatever season you are in, never focus the greatness of loss, rather fix your eyes on God who repays.

117 – Case for Governance

Management has different levels of altitude. The higher the altitude the bigger the picture and the smaller the details appear. From the lofty skies, roads look like maps rather than journeys and cars look like ants among indistinguishable colonies. Eventually the people and even entire cities disappear, being replaced by mountain ranges, oceans, deserts and plains.

Every level has its perspective and its range. Some cameras are held by photographers on the ground, others are flown by drones, others orbit from space. It is not the role of the cameras from space to perceive where a painting should be hung on a wall because cameras from space can only look straight down. Moreover, the camera in orbit can see many more details; it would be wasteful to use a camera that sees the big picture for matters that anyone on the ground with eyes can handle.

Governance is a level of management like any other—with diligence, skill, format, and time requirements. But, it’s work is done by few and is understood by even fewer. Still, it is vital.

Mountains and forests, oceans and plains, even deserts and glaciers have their benefits and value. They are painted and defined by the wider view—the bigger picture—they are decided by the seat of governance.

Governance, in practical terms, occurs at the board level of an organization, but the principles of governance carry down even to the janitor with nothing below him but the floor. The executive term is “policy”; the courtroom term is “precedence”; the business term is “big picture”; the artistic term is “broad brush”; the Biblical term is “governance”.

God is the “Governor” of creation. He sets the plains and hills while we harvest resources, sow, eat, and build upon His Earth. Just the same, rules from the top set the table and prepares the courses, but each individual decides how to eat, bite by bite.

Governance is vital. Governance decides the grand picture. Someone must sit at the helm of the greater wheel. Sweepings changes must be made and, while some changes must disrupt, a wise governor knows both the evils of too much ado about something and death by soothing poison.

118 – Message via Cosmos

God will approach us with individual, routine guidance. Sometimes it’s a warning, other times it’s an encouragement. He might speak to us through a feeling or “sense” of an idea.

God also likes to talk to us through people. He will send a friend, coworker, classmate, cousin—and He especially likes to deliver messages through people that happen to irritate us most, right at the time they deliver the message. Those people probably don’t know that God’s using them to deliver important truth for our lives. To them, they are just getting something off their chests or bubbling over with some frustration we stirred in them by our recent action. But, for us, their words may be remarkably relevant to the situation in our lives, especially in light of recent events.

God can, and does, use anyone for this—some passer-by on the street, a drunk guy at a bar who doesn’t know you and everybody thinks is a fool, but his words address a riddle in your heart that you went to bed with the night before. He’ll send a teacher, supervisor, student, subordinate, spouse, ex, parent, child, older or younger sibling, or whomever we least want to listen to. He even uses billboards or other events in life. God spoke to Balaam through his own donkey and He spoke to Jonah through a crew of sailors.

Don’t look for it; it will find you, especially when you don’t expect it. It will never stop happening, no matter how old you get, no matter how much you grow in knowing God.

When God sends messages to us through such means, He makes a few presumptions. The messenger neither needs nor earns any “credibility” kudos for delivering the message, and may or may not even know that a message is being delivered at all. You’re expected to get the message and are responsible for understanding it. And, God may not tell you how to obey His message, only the results He expects. He’s already told us how.

God has revealed many things in His Word already, also through life. Every prophecy or message from the cosmos presumes we have read God’s Word and paid attention.

119 – Judge Each Situation

A dad is too busy dealing with adult babies in the world to remember every errand his family assigns to him. He deals with a complaining boss, parents, students, and customers to both buy the ketchup and build the pantry to keep it in. Try to be understanding if he doesn’t remember where you didn’t tell him where you decided to put the ketchup.

While dad is working, mom is chasing away the dust and moving the laundry that never ends, all while feeding the children who can’t be left alone lest they cause bring apocalypse prematurely. When you get home, thank mom that the house is still standing, thank her more if it’s clean, and bow at her feet if there is food to eat. But, it’s hard to do that unless you hold off judgment before you give each situation a thorough look.

I once told two brothers, “There is a very easy way for your parents to have more energy to be kind, understanding, and never make mistakes: Get rid of you two kids, then they will always be well-tempered, calm people. But, your parents have two growing problems: you and you. Don’t forgive them for loving you. Instead, love them back.”

The problem with being ungrateful for family, friends, neighbors—and everyone—isn’t gratitude, but prejudgment. Don’t criticize another man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.

There are no “easy” decisions in punishing, firing, hiring, or relocating. We can’t throw people away for being sinners, not in families, relationships, nor the workplace. Big mistakes need demotion and diminished stewardship, but we remain useful to someone as long as we breathe. Man-made morals would have us either ignore all mistakes or punish every mistake without mercy. God’s morals are that of redemption: Every punishment must be educational or there is no benefit.

God chastens us because He loves us. When we do what is wrong, we need less responsibility to do less harm, pain to remind us not to do it again, instruction so we can understand how to do better, and there are never easy answers to make that process works. After all, only God is the perfect Judge.

Matthew 7:1-5, Luke 6:37-38