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“You have stayed long enough at this mountain.”  – Deuteronomy 1:6 

Sometimes I still miss those high-level corporate meetings I used to attend several times a year at the company headquarters in New York.  I always came back full of new ideas and enthusiasm, renewed and refreshed from all I learned, and from hanging out with my colleagues.   It was like a mountaintop experience, and I could hardly wait to get back and share it all with my team.

Except inevitably my presentations would fall flat and I was quickly brought back down to earth.  To be fair, I had experienced the mountaintop and they had not, so understandably they did not share my zeal.  So, instead of buy-in their initial response was often pushback, partly from a stubborn resistance to change, but more practically from procedural details that were lacking.  And that is what always brought me back to the real world, leaving me with two major challenges.   One was trying to convince my team to embrace the new idea, the other to communicate back up the food chain those details that must be ironed out before that grand plan of theirs could be implemented..

It is an ancient leadership predicament, as Moses faced a similar issue, who following his mountaintop experience being inspired by a burning bush, descended the mountain to lead the Israelites out of bondage into the Promised Land.  But the Israelites pushed back, both from lack of faith, as well as a very practical matter of lack of food and water.  This left Moses with two difficult challenges; one, to convince and encourage the Israelites to persevere toward their destiny, and to remind God that his chosen people were hungry and thirsty.

Birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, retreats, and high-level corporate meetings, even quiet solitary times with a cup of coffee, all mountaintop moments providing much needed renewal, refreshment, and inspiration, not to mention pleasure.  Yet, as much as we sometimes wish those moments would never end, we must be careful not to linger too long.  As Moses reminds us, “You have stayed long enough at the mountain.”  We are still needed down the mountain, to convince and encourage, and to tend to those everyday practical details.  While those mountaintop corporate meetings inspired great ideas, it was back home with my team where they got executed.  That’s where life happens.

“And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years.  Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’”  – Luke 12:19 

Question: “What do retirement funds, college degrees, and nuclear submarines have in common?”  Answer: “They are all designed to give us a sense of security – security for our future, security in our vocation, and security for our protection.”  So, that little riddle got me thinking, do they really?  Yet security in this increasingly insecure world seems to be one of today’s most sought after – and elusive – commodities.

Several years ago I suffered a sudden and unexpected medical event that nearly took my life.  It should have actually, except for the quick action of my wife, and by the grace of God.  And it happened despite my best efforts to do the right things – exercise, regular checkups, decent diet, hard work, retirement savings, and a college education – which according to conventional wisdom should have made my life secure.  Right?

Didn’t Jesus tell a parable sort of similar?  It was about a rich man whose land produced such a good crop he decided to build bigger barns to store it in, for he was certain he had enough to be secure for years to come; that is, until he received this startling wakeup call from God: “You fool!  This very night your life will be demanded from you.” 

For years I had mistakenly believed, like the rich man, that true accomplishment could be measured by how much we had stacked in the barn.  But if my health incident taught me anything it was to beware of such thinking; that in fact there is but one measure of true accomplishment in this life and that is to fulfill the purposes for which God uniquely created each of us.

If you’re thinking like I did that when you have enough stacked in the barn you can just take life easy, eat, drink and be merry; beware, for you never know when your life may be demanded of you.  It was precisely fifteen years ago this very day, in fact, when I was released from the hospital after my own wakeup call, and since then not a day has gone by I do not thank God for another chance to fulfill those purposes for which I was created.  “Watch out!  Be on your guard,” Jesus warned, “[for] a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”  – Hebrews 12:1 

When I was a child my parents generously paid for me to have piano lessons.  I think I was in first grade when I started, and it seemed kind of fun at the beginning.  Except pretty soon my parents, in collaboration with the piano teacher, spoiled the whole thing by demanding that I practice every day.  That was the pits, interrupting playtime with my friends.  At best I practiced the minimum I could get by with to keep them off my back.  That went on for several years until my progress at learning piano ground to a halt.

After that I refused to touch the piano even to play Chopsticks, until high school when I became buddies with a guy who was an amazingly entertaining piano player.  He could play almost anything, always attracting a crowd.  Wow, I thought, if only I could do that!  So, for the first time in years I started tinkering with the piano, learning to play a handful of songs from sheet music reasonably well, yet still far from how my friend could perform, his fingers flying across the keyboard.  But it did motivate me to practice.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s popular book Outliers he suggests there is a 10,000-hour rule, that to truly master a skill requires the dedication of practicing a minimum of 10,000 hours.  To put that in perspective, to put in 10,000 hours of practice over a period of five years would require approximately 5.5 hours per day of practice – every day!  Even if I had been obedient to my parents and music teacher I would not have even come close.

Some experts have disagreed with Gladwell’s 10,000-hour theory, and while I am not knowledgeable enough to argue either side, one thing seems obvious to me; for about the same time I became enamored with piano I was also passionate about basketball.  Yet I knew instinctively that even if I shot hoops all day, that between my five-foot-seven-inch stature and my mediocre athletic ability I would be lucky to earn the right to suit up.  And anything beyond that was simply laughable.  Same with the piano, for my friend possessed something I severely lacked just as I did with basketball – God-given talent.

Paul’s version of the 10,000-hour rule goes like this, “Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”  For as I have learned, to live a full, productive, and abundant life, regardless of any God-given talents, demands a lifetime of hard work and practice.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him . . .”

• Romans 8:28

Hard to believe it has been twenty-five years, since the 9/11 attack that is.  Most of us, I imagine, who were beyond toddler age at the time remember vividly exactly where we were at the exact moment we became aware of the attack on the World Trade Center towers.  Some have referred to that event as our generation’s Pearl Harbor, and have likened the firemen and other heroic first responders to those brave souls who sacrificed their lives on the beaches of Normandy on D-day.

I was managing a regional bond trading operation for a major Wall Street investment firm at the time, with our offices located on the forty-fourth floor of a downtown Dallas skyscraper.  In our large trading room was a television situated at one end as a financial news source, which we rarely watched.  But being closely linked with our New York headquarters, we were alerted right away about a plane crashing into one of the towers, which caused us all to migrate toward the TV.  Moments later we stared slack-jawed as we witnessed the second airliner slam head on into the other tower.

These were evil acts we had just witnessed, visited upon thousands of innocent victims, our fellow citizens, in our own country, on our own soil, specifically in New York and Washington, D.C. . . . Then, before we could even begin to process what we had seen, the most amazing thing began to occur, good overtaking evil.  In a flash it seemed, the courageous firemen and other emergency responders arrived – incredible heroes who literally saved thousands of lives at the risk, and losses of their own.  Then others came, and more began to pitch in from all over, however they could.  The goodness of people rose to the occasion.  Thousands of stories have emerged since then in testimony to this goodness.  We’ve all heard many of them, and will hear more for years to come.

It has always been my belief that in the long-run, goodness wins out over evil, that love wins out over hate.  We are God’s children after all, and because of that, He works in all things for our good.  This does not mean that all that happens is good, for evil is prevalent in our fallen world, but God is able to redeem every circumstance for our long-range good.  9/11 bore witness to that, the goodness of God and His people prevailing over evil.

“Streams of living water will flow from within him.”  – John 7:38

It has been said that “we make a living by getting, but we make a life by giving.”  I’m reminded of the book Rich Dad Poor Dad back when it was a highly advertised bestseller, and its author Robert Kiyosaki was out touting his “Rich Dad Poor Dad” seminars all over the media.  I resisted all of it back then assuming it was just another self-help get-rich-quick scheme, which typically meant the author getting rich, not the reader.  I remained skeptical, until for reasons I don’t recall, the executive coach I was working with at the time, insisted I read the book.

In a nutshell, the book is about the contrasts between the two father figures in Kiyosaki’s life, one being his natural father, the poor dad, the other his best friend’s dad, the rich dad.  Poor Dad, though was not actually poor, in fact earned a rather substantial salary.  Neither was Rich Dad, an entrepreneur, always flush with cash.  The difference was that Poor Dad, being on a fixed salary, viewed money as finite – scarce.  Rich Dad, though, being an entrepreneur, viewed money as abundant for those willing and creative enough to harvest some of it.  Oddly, though, their contrasting attitudes toward money – scarcity versus abundance – was not as evident in their accumulation as in their giving.  Poor Dad would give to charity only when he had some left over, but Rich Dad extended generosity regardless if he was short of cash, on the conviction he would be able to come up with it one way or another.

It was in reading that message that I began to take Kiyosaki’s book seriously.  Although I was right about one thing in my original skepticism, the subject of the book was about getting rich, but not rich in wealth, rather rich in life.  That was eye-opening and life-changing for me, for I had spent most of my adult life up to that point pursuing wealth by hoarding my gains assuming there was a limited supply.  Instead of allowing living water to flow through, I was trying to dam up my little part of the stream, which oddly limited the potential rather than expanding it.

As Oswald Chambers says, “We cannot measure our life by success, but only by what God pours through us.”  For when streams of living water flow through us, only then do we become rich in life, for we make a living by getting, but we make a life by giving.