“. . . unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.”  – John 12:24 

Ah, the annual autumn battle with the oak leaves!  We do love the eight large gorgeous oak trees that surround our home, especially the beautiful fall colors they produce – that is, until they begin raining down into big piles all over the yard.  And that’s where we are now as leaf raking is soon to become a daily chore in desperate attempt to keep our yard looking nice, a seemingly endless battle as the overnight breezes blow more leaves out of the trees.  Yet, not far away the wooded trails where we often walk and bike the leaves remain unviolated by rakes and leaf blowers creating a thick carpet over the ground where during the course of winter they are left to slowly decay, enriching the soil and providing nourishment for the new vegetation in the forthcoming spring.  It is nature’s way of demonstrating how death becomes life-giving.  Mind you, it is only the foliage that dies, not the entire tree.

We humans are like that.  When a part of our self-centered nature dies it becomes life-giving. When we surrender our addictions and other things we think we can’t live without, we position ourselves to nourish, restore and replenish others, to offer them new life.  There is no better example of this than what occurs in Alcoholics Anonymous which is comprised of people who have surrendered their addictions to God (some say a higher power) through the support of fellow human beings who have walked the same path.  It is a beautiful thing how one who has surrendered – that is, died to part of oneself – is able to in turn “sponsor” another through his or her surrender, a dying that becomes life-giving.  Lives are recovered, relationships restored, and new ones formed.  AA works because one person’s death to a life of addiction becomes life-giving to another.

Each of us is like a grain of wheat, and until we die to ourselves, we remain just a grain of wheat; but if we die, we produce much fruit; our death becomes life-giving, filling our lives and those of others with abundance, meaning, and purpose.

Autumn is such a beautiful time, my favorite season of the year.  It is a time when part of nature dies, yet from that death new life is nourished – just like what we do when part of us dies.

“A man’s wisdom gives him patience.”  – Proverbs 19:11 

What is the greatest distance you have ever walked?  What is the longest book you ever read?  What is the biggest meal you ever ate?  And finally, what do you think these three questions have in common?  In case you haven’t already figured it out, the answer is this: Whatever distance you walked you did so one step at a time, you read the book one page at a time, and you ate the meal one bite at a time.  In other words, these are all projects that are completed in small stages.

When I came across this riddle recently it struck me how it was a lesson I had to learn the hard way, for as a younger person I had little patience with small steps.  I wanted to get from A to B as quickly as possible.  Why walk when I could get there faster in a car?  Why waste time reading long books when I could read the Cliff Notes version and move on?  And food was to devour, not linger over.  Then there was college which was a place to graduate from instead of an opportunity for learning.  And forget graduate school which would only cause delay in the meteoric rise in my career that was sure to come.

Until one day I looked around and realized I had been stuck in the same position while many of my peers had leapfrogged ahead.  They were the ones, of course, who studied harder and took time for graduate school.  Only when I started reading thick books, getting up early and going for long walks and runs and bike rides, and taking the time to enjoy the company of family and friends over a nice meal did I begin to catch up.

I was in such a hurry back then, yet as I learned the hard way, it was the one thing that was holding me back.  Only when I discovered that by eating smaller bites, reading longer books, and going greater distances one step at a time that life and work and relationships began to take shape in the ways I had always dreamed.

Funny how in my twenties and thirties I had all those years ahead of me, yet I was so impatient.  And now that my years have grown more limited it seems so natural and peaceful to live one day at a time, taking one step at a time.  I suppose the old Proverb is correct, “a man’s wisdom gives him patience.”

“I will make you a community of peoples.”  – Genesis 48:4 

When I went off to college one of the first people I met was a guy named Ralph who lived in the same dorm down the hall from me.  Ralph was a graduate from one of the big city high schools in a wealthy section of Houston, the exact polar opposite of the small Texas Panhandle town where I grew up.  At first I did not think much of it.  We both, after all, had proven to have attained the grades and credentials to gain admission into the same competitive university.  But Ralph was a curious sort of guy who found my rural upbringing to be a bit of a novelty which led to a great deal of conversation about the differences.  Since small town society was all I had ever known I was at first taken aback, not that Ralph was insulting, rather I had naively assumed people, Americans in general and Texans in particular, had much more in common than differences.

Ralph and I never saw each other again after that first semester, but I will forever remain grateful for those late-night dorm room conversations that helped prepare me and my future family to become happy and prosperous urban dwellers – like Ralph’s family had been – never to return to my rural roots.  Except, as the old saying goes, “you can take the boy out of the country, but you can never take the country out of the boy.”

Fast forward many years later, I was asked to speak to a roomful of Wall Street investment bankers in New York about a rather sensitive issue pertaining to the internal culture of our investment banking firm that was having a negative impact on relationships, and consequently the growth of our business.  I felt like I had gotten the short straw on that assignment; that is until I remembered my conversations with Ralph and his curiosity about rural life, which led me to share some stories about my experience growing up in a small town and what it was like to live together in community where we all knew each other, looked out for one another, and helped each other out.

In speaking to Jacob regarding the Promise Land God made it clear, “I will make you a community of peoples.”  Community!  That was the key message that day, and perhaps what Ralph’s curious mind was fishing for.  In small towns it is sort of an organic thing, but communities exist everywhere, as I have learned, including big cities.  It’s any place where people know each other, look out for one another, and help each other out.

“They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green . . .”  – Psalm 92:14 

If you were anything like me starting off in life you probably had this wild dream in the back of your mind that “if I can ever achieve enough financial success in life to have all the things I want, plus enough set aside so that I don’t have to break my back to make ends meet, I will have achieved the American dream.”  (Thankfully, some of you pursued a higher calling than me.)  Again, if you were like me the possibility of that ever happening was so remote that it was – well, just pure fantasy.  Looking back on that now, though, I realize how foolish I was; for I did eventually wake up one day and realize that achieving financial success is not necessarily all it’s cracked up to be.

In one of his many brilliant and convicting parables, Jesus tells of a rich man whose land produces an abundant harvest, enough so that the man decides he should build bigger barns in which to store his surplus grain, after which he plans to kick back and enjoy life for many years; “eat, drink and be merry,” he says (Luke 12:13-21).  At one time I would have agreed with the man.

I’m curious how the concept of retirement became so prevalent in our society, to the extent of almost being an entitlement.  Some speculate it was the establishment of Social Security, which as the average life-expectancy continues to increase, has evolved from being a stopgap for the aged as it was first intended, to becoming a long-term pension for the masses.  Others credit the decades of post-World War II prosperity that led to the growth of corporate pension plans and the ability to accumulate wealth through 401k plans and the like.  We all expect it though, don’t we, myself included.  Plus, we fear the warnings from the financial services industry (my old stomping ground) that if we fail to save enough for the “golden years” and invest it wisely our goose will surely be cooked.

Of course it’s wise that we should strive to attain adequate financial resources in order to provide for ourselves and our families in the future in case our ability to earn diminishes.  But more importantly, it frees us to use our time, treasure and energy for the benefit of others, and for the advancement of God’s Kingdom.  And if we can possibly do so, don’t we all have this wild dream in the back of our minds to live out our days like the Psalmist says? “They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green.”

“. . . be generous and willing to share.”  – 1Timothy 6:18 

At the suggestion of one of our staff members our corporate team one year committed to do something we had never done before at year end, pitch in a few bucks out of our own individual pockets and help someone who was struggling.  Prior to that our tradition had always been to have a party and exchange gifts among ourselves.  Instead, we were introduced to a family who had several children, the mother was battling cancer, and the father had lost his job.  As we learned more about them we were able to determine their specific needs, proper sizes of clothes, food and other household items they needed, and toys for the children’s Christmas, to name a few.  Then on a specified day we all collectively caravaned to their modest home to deliver Christmas.  One of our team members was even dressed as Santa.  Tears flowed on both sides, the givers and the recipients.  What we didn’t expect was how our whole business operation would be transformed by what we did, as we all began to change the way we treated others, and each other, launching a steady, rapid and significant growth period in our business.

Recently someone happened to mention the classic 1942 movie Citizen Kane starring Orson Welles, and even though I had heard about it all my life I realized I had never seen it, which prompted me to search it out and rent it on Amazon.  The long and short of the story is about a man who spent his whole life pursuing wealth and self-gratification, only to find himself in his later years a lonely old man withering away alone in his giant mansion.  Contrast that with another 1940’s era movie classic, It’s a Wonderful Life in which George Bailey sacrifices his dreams of wealth and success for the good of his family and community, yet in the end is declared the “richest man in town.”

As Frederick Buechner once wrote, “Our happiness is all mixed up with each other’s happiness and our peace with each other’s peace.  Our happiness, our own peace, can never be complete until we find some way of sharing it with people who . . . have no happiness and know no peace,” which is a great description of the lesson our team learned on that winter afternoon many years ago.  As the Apostle Paul wrote to his friend Timothy, “Command those who are rich in the present world not to . . . put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain . . . [but] to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.”  Doing so can be transformational – both for the givers and recipients.