(The Twelve Ways of Christmas, Part 5: The Way of Watching)
Ken Johnson’s answer had become automatic, though dead-on accurate. Whenever someone found out he had flown helicopters for the army in Viet Nam, they would often ask, “So what’s it like to be a pilot in Viet Nam?”
“Months of boredom,” Ken would say, “followed by 15 minutes of sheer terror.”
Ken’s military training, and his subsequent years as a police detective, had made him an expert at noticing things that others were oblivious to. He would pass a random building in a strange city and mutter, “Somethin’ not right going on in there.” He could spot and usually identify one of 18 different kinds of smiles, or when an interviewee was lying or hiding something. But none of his experience or training, including the gritty lessons learned from a failed marriage and some very tense relationships with two of his adult children, could have prepared him for this.
Somebody took a shortcut to Ken Johnson’s heart. [click to continue…]
“So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whatever happened to Green Stamps? They’re an indelible memory of my childhood. In case you missed it, the Sperry & Hutchinson Company, began offering stamps to retailers back in 1896. Grocery stores, gas stations and the like bought the stamps from S&H and gave them as bonuses with every purchase, based on the amount you bought. In their heyday, 80 percent of U.S. households collected some kind of stamp.
My sister and I grew up licking green stamps and pasting them in books. When the A&P bag began filling up with completed books, we started getting excited. We’d peer at the two pages of toys in the S&H catalogue, surrounded by page after page of sheets, clocks, toasters, and other boring things. (Truth be told, you could get virtually anything with stamps; a school in Erie, Pennsylvania, exchanged 5.4 million stamps for two gorillas for the local zoo.)
Anyway, when we had collected enough to make the trade, we’d go off to the Redemption Center. Technically, we’d already “bought” the stuff. We were presenting evidence of our purchase (the stamps) in order to redeem – to buy back – our merchandise.
This is not about Green Stamps, but about redeeming. About buying back something that already belongs to you – namely your opportunities and your time. [click to continue…]
What do you do when you’ve done what you know to do, and what you know to do isn’t working this time? How do you explain the fact that time-tested methods for producing results, solving problems, and getting ahead just aren’t working this time? How do you plug the leaks in your economic life?
Questions like these are front and center among politicians, economists, investors, and families these days.
The problem isn’t a shortage of solutions. The problem is that that the solutions we know are supposed to work aren’t working.
We’re like a wad of sailors on a stormy sea, who keep running to opposite sides of a ship to steady it in the waves – while all the while, the hull is leaking. I’ve seen it at kitchen tables; I’ve seen it at capital buildings. Everything we do to steady the ship just draws in more water, and sailing has turned to bailing.
I wonder if anybody is asking – really asking – God.
(Aw, what does HE know?)
Plenty, it would appear. This isn’t the first time politicians and businesspeople confronted a leaky economy. [click to continue…]
How do you learn best? Mark Meadows used to amaze me in third grade. He’d just sit there. Never write. Never raise his hand to answer a question. Just sit and listen. And make “A’s.”
Cameron Walker? Never stopped moving.
Me? I don’t think I ever stopped running my mouth. (Hey! I heard that!)
We all learned. We just did it in different ways.
The same is true of people in the Bible. Guys like Paul could go off into the desert for three years and think about stuff. Analyze things. With the Holy Spirit’s help, rehash everything he’d ever believed (incorrectly) about the Law.
Our buddy Peter was different. From the day He met Peter, Jesus began transforming him from a “man of fish” to a man of God. Like Moses before him, Peter learned with pictures and visual objects. Things like coins and nets and fish and swords. I’d like to show you a few objects Jesus used to teach Peter to hear God’s voice. I think you can learn, too. Even if you learn best by talking or sitting there listening, I’ll bet you can pick up a few important lessons from Peter’s experience.
[click to continue…]
