Impact!

For those who played baseball or golf, there is a sound and a feeling that is unmistakable. The ball hits a sweet spot on the bat that generates the most impact. The ball feels like it literally jumps off the bat and you pretty much know it immediately. I hit one like this last week (about 330 feet - not bad for a 57 year old with a wood bat) and it keeps you going playing a kids sport. I won't mention that in the same game I struck out twice.

When we think about what is best for our kids, it is not happiness, but impact. Impact comes behind righteousness (or holiness) but it is it's cousin. To be righteous and be productive in our troubled world means to make an impact. I remember the people that have made the most impact on me - people that took an interest in me and mentored me. My dad and father-in-law certainly are among those people. Deb and I are marriage mentors and it seems like so much to spend 16 weeks or so investing so much in one couple, but it is so worth it if we can make an impact on their marriage.

I think it is for that reason that I don't really think about retirement in the traditional sense. The need to make an impact lasts for a lifetime. I think the best years of impact-building in my life are still ahead. The thought of no impact and living only for myself seems fruitless. I think of the words of Paul - "do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interest of others" (Phil. 2:3-4).

Do you think of impact-building in this way? On this Fathers Day, are you building into the life of others? It is never too late to start.

The Lost Art of Conversation

I love social media. It has brought me into contact with people I probably would not have stayed in contact with. It keeps me connected with those closest to me. My daughter is halfway across the world right now, yet she feels so close because of social media. Yet, for all its positives, I fear social media is causing more harm than good. One of the ways it is causing harm is it virtually eliminates conversation.

I can think of many ways to illustrate this, but let me share a couple. First your urge to engage in virtual activity hurts your ability to engage in interpersonal activity. Walk into your nearest restaurant and look at the tables. You will find people heads-down looking at their phones while the person sitting across from them does the same thing. Deb and I were eating out at Costco (yes, I am quite the date) on the way home from work and I spotted a father and young daughter and both were looking at their phones. I don't think I saw a single word uttered between the two of them. How tragic!

Another way of harm is that social media is a one-way expression of language. When someone tweets or makes a post, they are doing so to make a unilateral statement. That is why so many get in trouble. I don't care much for Twitter and don't use it. I have trouble expressing something in few characters and developing a thought. The problem is I am conveying a thought that has to be flattened into a few characters. Then I have the problem of context and time. Someone is going to read that tweet and try to inject their own context. In a conversation, both of these are less likely to happen.

I think of Jesus and the woman at the well (John 4:7-38) as a prime example of what we lose in conversation. There is context - it is the middle of the hot summer day and a Jew and a Samaritan woman would never associate. Jesus asks her for a drink, a very unusual request under that context. She responds to ask why He would do that. He says he can provide living water which evokes curiosity. It goes back and forth with Jesus explaining what living water is and identifying with this woman's sinful lifestyle without condemning her. It is a masterful use of conversation by the Lord of the conversation. Can you imagine Jesus using texting or tweeting?

"Can u give me a drink?"

?

"Can u give me a drink?"

? - "what r u asking Jew man? I am a Samaritan."

"I can give u living water"

?

And so on it goes. I have friends that will try to engage me in long conversation via text messaging and I put a stop to it. Call me - too long to discuss in 140 character spurts. It is so easy to fall into the trap and it follows us into ordinary conversation. I find I interrupt to frequently. I don't listen intently and empathetically. My staccato use of conversation is all too easy. Force yourself to listen deeply, to listen carefully. Repeat back the person's words to them. And please put the device away during the conversation.

Resist Hate

On my way home on Friday, I saw a car with the following bumper sticker.

I am struck by the combination of these two words. They don't go together. Kind of like "gorge slower" or "crawl faster". There is no way to resist hate. Hate is a raging fire that consumes everything in its path. Do you really think we can reason out of hate? Did the suicide bomber who targeted teenagers wake up that morning and try to reason his way out of the despicable act?

There is natural evil in that heart of ours. The separation between me and the terrorist is not that great. I blogged about this when Osama Bin Laden was killed. As an example, when I drive behind a person driving slowly and my "righteous" anger seethes and I curse at them. I have read many books on the Rwanda genocide as I have visited Rwanda twice. How could people kill their neighbor - people they had known for years? The answer is simple - they saw them, not as friends and neighbors, but as objects of the enemy. People when asked why they killed simply expressed it as a "job to be done". Just like the terrorist.

Hate needs to be transformed, not resisted. Hate must be transformed by love. We must see people the same way God sees them - in His image.We must empathize with them. We realize that they are not objects of God's wrath, but troubled recipients of His grace just like me. The love must be seated in that perspective, not some sappy man-made emotional reaction. This kind of transformation is 100% supernatural. I cannot will myself out of this deep-seated hate in my heart. God must do that. Hate is still there but it is crowded out by love.

James 4:7 is a great verse for this - "Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you."  This verse, at first blush, almost seems to support my friend's bumper sticker. In fact, it is the opposite. We are to submit to God first. Second, the resisting is against the author of hate, not the hate itself. The resistance must come supernaturally from God through his changing grace. 

Handcrafted

McDonald's latest advertising campaign uses the phrase "signature crafted" to describe it's new sandwiches. At this time, I am also reading the book "Simplify" which is a book that describes how companies have succeeded through what the author calls "price-simplification" or "proposition-simplification". In price-simplification, the goal is to continuously drop your price to a point where it is almost a no-brainer to purchase. One of the examples in the book is the original McDonalds business formula which is to produce acceptable quality but fast, consistent, and cheap.

One of my management team in a previous company once coined a phrase that has stuck with me over the years. He said, "Dan there is fast, cheap, and great - pick two". I have nothing against McDonalds (I actually like their breakfast sandwiches), but crafted is not a term I would use for their sandwiches. It is not like Morton's or Ruth Chris where there is a cook to order and I wait for my meal. If I wait more than two minutes for my sandwich, I am disillusioned. That is why they still call it fast food.

As I think about the beauty of God's creation, I think of this word "handcrafted". The psalmist contemplates this "When I consider your heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and the stars which you have created, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him" (Psalm 8:3-4). I read the Genesis account and you see creativity and thought interwoven through the creative process.

Further, today is Mother's Day, a day we reach out to those that gave us birth and those that raised us. My mother did not craft me in my mother's womb and it is ludicrous to think that Deb that with our kids. No, God did that. Not one of our kids called Deb and said - "thanks Mom for making me". The perfect creator of the heavens fashioned a new human being using human agents, intimacy of human relationship, time, and process. It shouldn't get old to amaze at the wonder of God. As our kids get older, this realization that they are in God's hands gets easier and easier as I think the same God handcrafted them from the beginning and calls them by name.

The Science Guy

A few months back, I attended the Tableau conference where the keynote speaker was Bill Nye, the Science Guy. Bill Nye is a very popular science educator and known for his wit and high energy presentation. Nye said a lot of very interesting things - watch the first four minutes of the following video from this conference. He said something like "we are a speck that is standing with a bunch of other specks surrounded by a bunch of other specks that orbits around a speck among other specks in the middle of specklessness. In other words, we suck. Yet you can know your place in space and with your brain you can change the world." Earlier in the speech, he talked about finding how he came to be through water they found with life in it on Mars.

Nye, who is very entertaining, got a standing ovation. I found myself with a deep sense of sadness that this man, brilliant as he was, could view his origin and his significance through the lens of himself. In my wildest imagination and as someone who did not always have a personal faith,  I could not even possibly imagine the complexity of space and of humans just coming to be from nothing. Nothing I observe points to that. I see a great designer who fashioned the vastness of the universe and then fashioned human beings in His image. I saw that even before coming to a personal faith.

I am humbled that the creator of the heavens and the earth has desired a personal relationship with me. I look into the vastness of space and I do see how seemingly insignificant we are. Yet I contemplate the infinite worth that God my creator gave to me. I imagine the ultimate cost that God paid to redeem me from the bondage of my sin through His son Jesus. I think it takes far less faith to believe that a personal God created man in His own image and bought a relationship with him than my origins are from water on Mars.

Every rejection of a creator God ultimately comes back to pride. We want to be the captain of our ship, to control our own destiny. We hate the thought of being accountable to someone. So we fashion ourselves as our own god. So when we hear this kind of thing, it actually sounds good to us. Paul says we worship the creation rather than the creator (Rom 1:16). I am reminded by his words to the Corinthian church - "But a natural man doe not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised".  A creator God who loves you longs for you to come to Him. 

Reconciliation and Redemption

Friday night for Deb and I usually is movie night. We typically get something from Netflix or occasionally go to the movies. We watched last week the movie "Manchester by the Sea" because the actor Casey Affleck won best actor. We know there are various types of movies and genres, but this one was just flat out depressing. Without getting into the details (spoiler alert), Affleck plays Lee, a man who loses his family in a tragic event and then some 10 years later his brother dies and in his will he is asked to be the guardian of his nephew, Patrick. As we were watching it, we kept waiting and waiting for something to happen. This something Deb articulated as reconciliation or redemption. We were left at the end with two characters who were wholly unsympathetic and the story line as unfulfilling.

The human heart longs for at least one of these two themes, reconciliation or redemption. Everything else leaves us bereft. It doesn't mean only good news - often it comes at the heals of bad and tragic news. I think this week of Robert Godwin, the elderly man senselessly gunned down seemingly at random and posted on Facebook. What do we make of this? Out of this comes reconciliation. The family forgives a man they never met. I am struck by their interview with Anderson Cooper.

I talked to a friend this past week who was a managing editor of a major newspaper and I asked him why the press seems to only report bad news. He said it was because "bad news is easier to find". The Godwin family would be more than justified to want vengeance and retribution. And in the end, the killer committed suicide. If that was where it was left, we could understand it. But they take it a step further in forgiving this man. That has to be supernatural. They understood reconciliation was an essential part of the healing process.  The other was redemption. Robert Godwin was celebrated yesterday in Cleveland. This was a man who was far from perfect but one who by all accounts lived his life for his God and his family. So in this one tragic incident we have God working out these principles of reconciliation and redemption to His own glory and to our own healing.

The Final Score

After the Cavaliers had won the NBA championship, I started reliving the moments of Game 7 and now have purchased through iTunes Games 5,6, and 7 so I can relive them in even more detail. I can recite the key moments of the game - "Oh, blocked by James" or "Kyrie Irving for 3 puts it up, it's good". The common thread of all these games is I can watch it knowing the final score. Usually, I can pick up a thing or two each time I watch it. The details are more fun when you know your team wins. I did the same thing with the World Series games 2,3, and 4 all games they won. I did download game 7 because it was so epic, but it wasn't so much fun because even though there was the homerun to tie the game, I knew the end result was not in our favor.

 

As I think about Easter, I am reminded that we know the final score. The final score was etched when Christ rose from the grave. Good has won - evil has lost. The price has been paid for the penalty of sin and the payment accepted. But unlike the Cavs, even though the final score is won and our team wins, the day to day game still lives on. Satan does not give up even though he knows the final score. If he can't win, maybe he can convince enough people not to believe their team has won. Or maybe he can convince others of an alternate reality that the game is still very much in doubt.

So I need to live my life in the reality of the final score. Easter very much reminds me of that. Jesus said "It is Finished" - the word tetelestai used there is the final score. There is victory in Jesus. Doesn't always feel like it every day, but since it is reality, it is fact. My feelings don't change the final score. What does that do to me? What does it change?  This needs to be a daily reminder. As Paul says, the resurrection is everything. Without it, we are "of all men most to be pitied". But with it "it is finished" (tetelestai).