by Andy Wood on October 9, 2009
This is what government does.
The distant sidewalk: built to code when the dentists built their exquisite office next door.
The near sidewalk: also built to code two years later on our site.
I’m sure to somebody in an office somewhere, the changes made sense at the time.
I’m also sure that somebody in that office will decide that one of us (probably us) has to fix the problem.
At our expense, of course.
Multiply this times trillions, and you’ll understand why some people are wary of the Federal government.
Not sure that’s what they meant by “promoting domestic tranquility.”
by Andy Wood on September 25, 2009
You up for a little side trip? This one rolls down Memory Lane in a church bus with papered-up windows, wide-eyed teenagers, and me in handcuffs in the back of a police car. This is the (true) story of what happens when non-planning randomizers like me actually take the time to plan something. This is the story of The Underground Project.
Once upon a time (hey, I said it was a story), I was a youth pastor in Lumberton, Mississippi. I was fairly new, and school had just let out for summer. For the folks at First Baptist Church, that meant one thing: Vacation Bible School. And I was expected to have something each night for the youth group. So I planned to do something unique and special each evening. Can’t remember which night it was for sure – I think it was Tuesday. But on the promotional information, I said very little. I just said come later – at 8:30 – for The Underground Project.
Use your imagination. Be an energetic teenager in a small, south Mississippi town in the early summer. You arrive at the church to see a painted sign attached to the chain link fence that says, Closed by Order of the State. (What’s funny about that is that the old church building actually had a bad flood/mold problem and had been ordered closed within a year or so.)
Ex-pec-tant and excited, you enter the fellowship hall, where you are asked to have a seat and wait for instructions. Then in groups of 6 or 7, you are invited into a room. There I explain that I have some important information for you. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on July 24, 2009
“I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!” -1 Corinthians 9:22-23, The Message
I’ve devoted a lot of time to a life powered by wishful thinking. With that came a lot of declaring about what I was going to do, and by when. Those lists I referred to in the last post even contain a pretty crazy collection of audacious plans. Just one problem. Some of them are lifetime pursuits, and I still haven’t started the chase.
Setting goals or writing down wish lists is a bit like writing a check. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on April 17, 2009
This week a friend sent me a poignant and compelling image that describes what it’s like to live in a climate or with a spirit of fear. But the image is so strong, I think it describes anybody who feels as though they are in a no-win situation.
I feel like a grasshopper on the ocean hanging onto a leaf. I cling to the leaf to keep from drowning. If I eat the leaf to keep from starving, I lose my life preserver, and drown.
I’ll tell you later what he learned in the process. But can you relate? [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on September 4, 2008
The LifeVesting Cycle
Stage 1: Allocate your resources.
Stage 2: Explore the possibilities
Stage 3: Follow your passion
Stage 4: Execute your plan
Stage 5: Protect Your Investment
Years ago, a Detroit homeowner went to check on his five-bedroom house.
It was gone.
As in, completely removed down to a vacant lot, gone.
Completely baffled, he asked the Detroit Free Press to help him find out what was going on. A reporter learned that not only was the house gone, but the deed to the empty lot was in someone else’s name. What had happened?
For starters, several years had passed since the homeowner had left the city without providing a forwarding address. Moreover, he had failed to make arrangements for someone to keep the property in repair. So the house was torn down because a city ordinance called for the removal of neighborhood eyesores.
Gives a whole new meaning to “Snooze, you lose,” doesn’t it?
Want to see a farmer laugh? Tell him you’re going to plant corn or tomatoes or something, take a three-month vacation, and come back to pick your harvest. Sorry, Mr. Douglas. It doesn’t work that way, in Hooterville or anywhere else. Investments of any type require care and cultivation. Jesus’ story of the sower and the four types of ground show just how rare a harvest really is. The seed that fell on the hard path became birdseed. The seed that fell on stony ground sprang up rootless. And the seed that fell among the thorns choked.
Investments – seeds of all types and the environment they’re planted in – require nourishing. That means breaking up the hard, resistant places, deepening the shallow places, and pulling the weeds. Did I mention that this was work? Where every day hurls new surprises and challenges? But if the harvest is worth it (and you will wonder at times), then the cultivating is worthwhile.
In order to experience the return you want, your investments require your attention, diligence, and adjustments. Mind if I switch metaphors? Hebrews 12 talks about the same idea, only it uses the imagery of a marathon race, and you’re the runner. Based on the imagery in this chapter, here are four ways to protect your investment: [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on August 30, 2008
I live in an area in which cotton farming is a multi-million-dollar enterprise. Care to hazard a guess about how much time the farmers here spend stripping or picking cotton?
About two weeks.
Everything that determines their futures for another year comes down to a two-week process. And yet, it’s what they do during the other 50 weeks of the year that will make or break the success of their harvest.
It’s all about the cycle, and where they are on it.
You may not be a farmer, but you were created to be a harvester of sorts. God created you with the capacity to envision a better future and a rewarding eternal state. But in most worthwhile pursuits, you don’t have the luxury of microwaving your results in a matter of minutes. While his medals were earned in a matter of seconds, Michael Phelps didn’t jump into a pool for the first time in June. His victories were the crowning achievement of his training cycle.
We, too, experience life in a variety of cycles. The seasons, economic cycles, and generational cycles come to mind. LifeVesting is no different. Each of the Laws of LifeVesting operate on cycles of continuous movement.
Don’t think of these as a locked-in sequence of steps; life is wonderfully much messier than that. Instead, think of the LifeVesting cycle as a flow of activity, moving from one stage to another. Over the next few days, I’d like to explore these with you. [click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on June 6, 2008
“Bruce likes to terrify himself.” So began a story years ago in Success magazine.
One day Bruce led some friends 9,000 feet up Mount Hood, and decided to show them how much fun it would be to slide down part of the way. While zipping down an ice field at 30 miles an hour, Bruce suddenly realized he had forgotten to remove his crampons – the spikes that attach to hiking boots. His feet were useless as brakes.
Uh oh.
Bruce had the presence of mind to realize that jabbing the spikes at the ice whizzing past him wouldn’t work either – that would risk breaking his ankles and hurtling off the side of the mountain. So as the edge of the cliff came rapidly into view, Bruce flopped over on his stomach and jabbed repeatedly, frantically, with his ice axe. He finally came to a halt about 50 feet from the edge of the cliff. He later said that the thing that kept running through his mind as he got closer and closer to the edge was, “Boy, this is a stupid way to die.”
Uh huh.
Oh, and just a thought – if it’s a stupid way to die, then maybe it’s a stupid way to live. But hey, that’s just me.
I don’t know if Bruce ever went ice surfing again. And for all I know, he may be the ultimate LifeVestor. But on this day, he was a gambler.
[click to continue…]
by Andy Wood on April 21, 2008
I guess it was the first face-off between parent and teacher in Carrie’s life. She was a little freaked in first grade about some impending disaster reported as fact in her science class – global warming, the death of the ozone layer, or something. We were riding in the car, and she asked me what I thought (in first-grade language, of course) about the certain impending doom of planet.
I found myself speaking from the depths of my soul – using words I’d never put together in the same sentence before.
“Carrie,” I said, “never, never, never believe anyone who would make you afraid of the future.”
I came by that honestly. I remember asking my dad at about the same age, “Did you know that the Russians have enough bombs to destroy every American?” He replied, “Yes, and we have enough bombs to blow up every Russian.” That more or less ended the Cold War for me. (By the way, you just haven’t lived until you’ve heard “Shout to the Lord” sung in Russian. Those American Idol contestants got nothin’ on our brothers and sisters in the former Soviet Union.)
This all came back to me last week. I was shopping with my wife at Walmart and passed a display of some sort of DVD series or books or something. The basic idea was, “spend your money on this to learn about how we’re all going to hell in a handbasket.” I passed.
[click to continue…]
