On a Strong Work Ethic

Well of recent I have been prone to muse about the trappings of the workplace and the requisite industry of any strong society. I am at a crossroads having left the traditional workplace for pursuit into the full-time military six years whence. Ah, but the wisdom of Uncle Sugar's Army hath but delivered that blow-fatale' to one's career, that fateful siren of the mandatory retirement. The winds of change are a'blowin'.

Wistful as one can be on promotions never earned, I can now resolutely say that I will never hear the words, "General Crow". I must admit that sounds good but it is not to be. But what of us mid-lifers? At this juncture, its a tough economy out there. I am reminded of being thirty-one years in and out of the work-place now and I have some strong understanding of my capabilities and aptitudes, talents, passions and frankly, what to avoid like a plague. I mean you are not going to want me to run a machine....I would fall asleep out of sheer boredom, or the whole factory would die because of my daydreaming! Now I could be a brain surgeon, but I would have to understand a little bit about it before I jumped right in!

Most of my peers getting to this point in their careers opt for the government contractor jobs. They have'nt earned the moniker, "Beltway Bandits" for no reason! Some strive for the golden goose; the coveted government civil-servant job with all its security and fortunes. OK, living in North Alabama where I grew up, the so-called fortune equals a really good salary, but here in DC, it can also mean supplementing your income with a pizza job. I know this first-hand. It gives me pause here.

I see the value of hard work over intellect, creativity and giftedness. I once had a college engineering professor tell me, "you learn to love the "A" Students because they are the ones who come back and are great teaching assistants or professors; but you also learn to love the "C" students because it is they who come back and build you a new reaserch lab through a handsome endowment"! I like that, because it personfies the maxim that human potential through talent and intelligence is not always what its marketed to be. I have seen plenty of educated people in my years here. Much of the constituency that I have served and have served with have had many advanced degrees, many PhDs. Much of my counsel to young up-and-coming fledglings (and I have seen many) is to tell them, "you dont need a PhD, you need a JOB", go out kill something, bring it home and eat it! This is where I want to take us here.

The purest and brilliant minds are of no count if one hasn't the discipline, the motivation, the punch and the grit to apply it to the task ahead of him, and press things to a close. One's giftedness does not determine his position in life; your abilities are not your measure; only what you produce. What determines your peace with who you are? Find out how God made you and pursue this to its infinite end with fervor!

Give me somebody with the determination to see things through, who is not afraid to put his shoulder into the task and we can accomplish many things! Give me someone who has discovered how and why God made them and its better than any symphony; its a masterpiece! I am reminded of Eric Liddel the scottish olympian (movie "Chariots of Fire") and missionary to China, and I am inspired. He lost the opportunity to qualify for his event because he chose out of principle not to run on the Lord's Day. His sister asked him, why he put himself through the agony of running and training so much, only to fail because of his forfeiture. He said, "I believe that God made me for a purpose (China), but He also made me fast. When I run, I feel His pleasure". Upon his graduation from Edinburgh University, he gave an unexpected speech, he shared the following:

"Over the gate at the University of Pennsylvania there is a motto, which reads, ‘In the dust of defeat as well as in the laurels of victory there is a glory to be found if one has done his best.’ There are many men and women who have done their best, but who have not succeeded in gaining the laurels of victory. To them, as much honor is due as to those who have received these laurels."

On An Attitude of Gratitude

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow." -- Melody Beattie

I am of the custom of camping onto life principles oftimes. During my morning walk today, I was listening to a podcast of one of my favorite radio hosts when I heard him quote this in answering a respondent. It welled within me some deep emotions that took me back to earlier days of my life. In 1980, I was in my late teens, I had lost my father the previous year, I had just impetuously quit my position with a local factory due to anger and immaturity, and I was a confused young man. It was the most difficult period of my life. I had no direction, no depth of experience to draw on, no job skills and no money. Surrounding that, my family had nothing either. My mother had a debilitating disease and we subsistied on a meager social security pension. We were in a deep hole and what little I could muster by mowing yards, sling blading ditches, and picking fruit coukl do little to stem the tide of lack. I look back on those days and could see the seeming hopelessness in those circumstances, but there is always hope. My younger brother had a part-time night job at a local chicken place. For a period of a year or so, we had chicken every night. Sometimes we had the side items, corn, potatoes, beans, etc. You would think that we would have turned into a yard-bird complete with feathers and beak!

I can see those days and fathom the Hand of God in His provision! I am so grateful for those times. We are stronger when we sustain the gales of these circumstances. Out of the ashes arose a child more confident in His Creator, a young man more confident to stand on his own, a father who wanted better for his children. Our lives are measured in seasons. How do you weather those storms? Can you draw on the depths of what you have amidst the privation of what you do not? Can you recognize that life is of great value regardless of what you have, possess, your credentials?

You know by standards of utility, my family and I do not have much now. We live in a fairly small home but in my present estimation its a mansion. Often I am overwhelmed at the cost of living here in Washington DC; am snowed under by the stressful and frantic pace of life and then I close my eyes and am transported to place of great joy, to small townhome in Burke, Virginia. To a place where the chaos is overwhelmed by solitude. A place where the voice of my sweetheart calms, a place where my precious daughter sings her beautiful pieces for school, a place of laughter where my quick-witted son spreads delightful humor and a place of fantasy where my youngest's playtime is spread all over the house....a beauty shop, a nail salon! Yeah, I am okay now. I am at peace and I am clear about that. How about you friend? Now what's for supper? I think I will have chicken......yeah, I'm southern.

ON SINGING

You know that there is always the guy behind you in the congregation that cannot carry a tune? The hymns and choruses are stabbed at; they sheepishly sing….oh, some even freely admit that they are tone deaf. You know we are not talking about you, no, but someone who may look like you. Yes, we even find these dear souls in the choir. Sometimes they volunteer for the solos and the specials and their fragile egos cannot be crushed by the mere mention of the thought that it may smart to hear them. Actually, I know that every music minister in the world has to deal with this issue.

Well, there are the other people too. These are the folk who have a tremendous gift. I have a daughter who certainly fits in this category. They are the ones that can be counted on to get every note perfect; they are the quick studies with “broadway” voices. Now some of these folks (not all of course) have the “Diva” mentality. If you are in the choir or are active in your music program, chances are they have wandered in for a short time. Here, we your “spiritualized” Luciano Pavoratti, Placido Domingo or Alma Gluck. Here is another, yet cumbersome issue that those in ministry have to deal with.

You know I had a thought the other day that will bring some perspective on this. You know, no matter how perfect a voice, no matter how keen a talent, no matter how grand a command of diction, we are not going to measure up to the heavenly hosts that sing before God! You know those angels that appeared that night on a hill to the shepherds upon the pronouncement. Those that Isaiah saw in the temple in Chapter 6 singing the thrice Holy! No matter how good or poor an earthly voice, God only hears a heart! ”….Out of the abundance the heart speaketh”, MT 12:34b, but out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth singeth as well. You know that God deserves our best; no question. We should always minister with our gifts, but it’s okay if our abilities are in other areas. I don’t mind hearing a “tone-deaf” person sing if their ministry is genuine. I also love when a genuinely gifted person ministers with their talent as well. Check all egos at the door and admonish each other properly with love. Now where did I put those ear plugs?

Who You Following?

Men hold truths nowadays with the bowels taken out of them, and the very life and meaning torn away. There are members and ministers of evangelical denominations who do not believe evangelical doctrine, or if they do believe it they attach but little importance to it; their sermons are essays on philosophy, tinged with the gospel. They put a quarter of a grain of gospel into an Atlantic of talk, and poor souls are drenched with words to no profit. God save us from ever leaving the old gospel, or losing its spirit, and the solid comfort which it brings; yet into the ditch of lifeless profession and philosophic dreaming we may soon fall if we commit ourselves to wrong leadership. Sound familiar? This is from no modern polimicist, this is from Spurgeon's Sermon on "The Choice of a Leader" preached, 1 August 1875, from the pulpit of the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

You Planting Among the Rocks or in the Thorns....

Spurgeon delivered a message entitled "Ploughing the Rock" based on Amos 6:12 "Shall horses run upon the rock? Will one plow there with oxen?" It reminds me of how short our time is hereon earth...how hard people's hearts are around us...how even flinty our own stony heart can be. Did you know that thousands of pastors leave the ministry every year? This sermon foreshadows this. But Mister Spurgeon ends with this plea to the Almighty and call to us.....perhaps if you're discouraged today, you can draw some encouragement here.

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What then? Shall the preacher continue his fruitless toil? If there is only half a hope left him, he is willing to go on and say, "Hear, ye deaf, and see, ye blind, and live, ye dead." He will even so speak this day, for his Master bids him preach the gospel to every creature; but it will be hard work to repeat the word of exhortation for years to those who will not hear it.

Happily there is one other turn which affairs may take. There is a God in heaven, let us pray to him to put forth his power. Jesus is at his side, let us invoke his interposition. The Holy Ghost is almighty, let us call for his aid. Brothers who plough and sisters who pray, cry to the Master for help. The horse and the ox evidently fail, but there remains One above who is able to work great marvels. Did he not once speak to the rock, and turn the flint into a stream of water? Let us pray him to do the same now.

And, oh, if there is one who feels and mourns that his heart is like a piece of rock, I am glad he feels it; for he who feels that his heart is a rock gives some evidence that the flint is being transformed. O rock, instead of smiting thee, as Moses smote the rock in the wilderness and erred therein, I would speak to thee. O rock, wouldst thou become like wax? O rock, wouldst thou dissolve into rivers of repentence? Hearken to God's voice! O rock, break with good desire! O rock, dissolve with longing after Christ, for God is working upon thee now. Who knows but at this very moment thou shalt begin to crumble down. Dost thou feel the power of the Word? Does the sharp ploughshare touch thee just now? Break and break again, till by contrition thou art dissolved, for then will the good seed of the gospel come to thee, and thou shalt receive it into thy bosom, and we shall all behold the fruit thereof.

And so I will fling one more handful of good corn, and have done. If thou desirest eternal life, trust Jesus Christ, and thou art saved at once. "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth," says Christ, "for I am God, and beside me there is none else." He that believeth in him hath everlasting life. "Like as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life."
O Lord, break up the rock, and let the seed drop in among its broken substance, and get thou a harvest from the dissolved granite, at this time, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

Two Philosophies

Freud wrote: ‘In all that follows I take up the standpoint that the ten-dency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man. The natural instinct of aggression in man - the hostility of each against all and all against the one - opposes the programme of civilisation.’ In other words, this philosophy is bankrupt; it begs the question, "is there real hope for man?"

In his work, "The Doctor Himself", David Martyn-Lloyd Jones wrote, "Turning to the future, when you come to consider the question of hope, what hope is there for man? It is here, it seems to me, that is seen the unique message of the Christian faith. It is not merely good advice, it is not mere morality or ethics, nor is it simply a higher view of life. It is a doctrine that gives due place to the real nature and state of mankind. To use biblical terminology, it declares that a man can be ‘born again’, that there can be a radical change in a man’s soul. He can become a new man. It is amazing, but it is true. History has its endless examples of it – its striking examples. It is not confined to an élite class – it happens amongst the common people. Here is hope for the drug addict, the alcoholic, or any kind of individual who has become an utter slave to some particular kind of sin. It has its dynamic – it is ‘the power of God unto salvation’.

What turned a raging Saul into the Apostle Paul, the greatest missionary ever to have walked th earth, delivering 2/3rds of the New Testament? The power of the Gospel! What transformed my father who was a slurring drunk and a striker into a weeping prayer for his family? It was Romans 1:16, "...the dunomos, or power of the gospel". Second Corinthians 5:17 delacres "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature....! I prefer that kind of Hope, how about you?

The Other Side of the Hill

F. W. Boreham wrote . . . ‘But, what is on the other side of the hill?' That, I say, is the question. It is the oldest question in the world and the greatest question in the world. All the pathos and the tragedy of the ages are crammed into it. It was the first question that man asked; it will be the last that he will try to answer. Wherever on this planet you find a man, you find him with eyes turned wistfully towards the distant ranges, repeating to himself again and yet again the old, old question, 'The hill! The other side of the hill! What is on the other side of the hill?'

From Crow's perspective, that is a compelling question. A question that I too have asked a few times in my life. In the present context I certainly am faced once again with this. The Army says I must retire and yes, I have options; armed with some skills and a proverbial drive that has me charging brick walls at times. Beyond the hills there are different paths. As Bunyan writes and was faced on his travels to the Celestial City, but Pilgrim was confronted by many challenges, yes?

What are you to do? Are you comfortable with your business, your practice, your career? How about your life? I am not talking about tangible things, but your character, the balance, the spiritual? What about the eternal? Ponder, yes?

On Thomas Edison and Intersecting Possbilities with Realities

Any of you possess enough motivation and tenacity in you to change humanity? Are you rather, working the nine-to-five, drawing a salary with no real authenticity? Frankly, I was inspired by this essay by F. W. Boreham on Thomas Edison. What a scientific entrepreneur! What a genuis of industry! Can you imagine turning ideas into tangibles benefits for mankind? You may say, wait Crow, I dont have that kind of talent, intellect or capacity. To this, I say, every person is endowed by God with skills, talents and abilities. Find what it is and zealously work to bring value to people and Glory to God that he deserves!

Boreham on Thomas Edison

Possibility Thinker
In the most modest and unpretentious circumstances, Thomas Alva Edison was born in Ohio on February 11, 1847. He was scarcely out of his cradle when he formed the conviction that nothing thinkable is impossible; and, at the age of eighty-four, he died translating into concrete actualities the wildest and weirdest conceptions of his restless brain. Multitudinous and bewildering as were his countless inventions, it is impossible to lay down the list of his countless and almost incredible triumphs without feeling that the mind that could wrestle with such problems, and produce such wonders, was itself, far and away, the most miraculous piece of mechanism of them all.

Like Faraday, on whom, to some extent, he modelled his career, he owed practically nothing to his education. He spent three months at school. His mother, and his own sharp eyes, taught him all that he came to know. Having once learned to read, he felt that the world was at his feet. As a small boy he devoured the entire contents of an Encyclopedia, Hume's History of England, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Newton's Principia, and he one day entered the Public Library at Detroit with the avowed intention of absorbing the entire contents of the institution, book by book! Every experience that came his way became grist to his mill. He began life by selling newspapers and fruit on a railway train. He was soon printing a paper of his own on that selfsame train. A little later, to further some of his other experiments, he added a laboratory to his travelling equipment; had the misfortune to set the van on fire; was severely cuffed by the angry guard; and the blow burdened him with lifelong deafness.

Touching Life At A Thousand Points
The precise number of his inventions will never be known. More than a thousand of his amazing contrivances were patented in the United States alone. In his 24th year he had 45 distinct inventions simultaneously under way, and the Patent Commissioner described him as "the young man who keeps the path to the Patents Office hot with his footsteps. "He allowed no grass to grow under his feet. At four o'clock one afternoon he made an important discovery; he immediately rushed to his solicitor, who instantly cabled particulars to London; and, next day, he was informed that his idea was under serious consideration in England. In an essay on Edison, Mr. Lionel Elvin remarks that he himself is writing on a typewriter by the light of an incandescent electric lamp. The room contains a gramophone, a wireless set and a telephone. As soon as his manuscript is complete, he intends to ring up a cinema to reserve seats for the evening. He will find his way to the theatre by electric train and then go home by taxi. And for all these things—the typewriter, the lamp, the gramophone, the radio, the telephone, the moving pictures, the electric train and the automobile—he is indebted to Edison.

Thomas Edison represents in his own person the new trend in scientific thought. More than three centuries ago, Lord Bacon hurled the thunderbolts of his vigorous denunciation into the academies of the scientists and the portals of the philosophers, charging these learned speculators with making no real contribution to the practical welfare of the race. "Words, and more words, and nothing but words," he complained, "has been the fruit of the toil of the most renowned sages of sixty generations." The old philosophy had been singularly shy of meddling in matters that might serve some utilitarian end, lest it should be supposed that academic pursuits were simply followed for the sake of the vulgar purposes that they promoted.

Science Looks At Life, Transfigures Everything
For many hundreds of years the most capable thinkers were content to deal in nebulous theories, abstract speculations, mystifying hypotheses and occult disquisitions. Science was in the world like a spider in the water, with its own native atmosphere gathered closely about it and fearful lest any general admixture should take place between the element that was the breath of its own nostrils and the turbid body of affairs beyond it. Even Seneca ridiculed the thinkers who applied their powers to increasing the comfort of their homes. "The invention of such appliances," he said, "is drudgery for the lowest slaves; philosophy lies deeper. It is not for her to teach men how to use their hands; her mission is to form the soul." It was against this pernicious doctrine that, in season and out of season Bacon protested. And with good effect. In a telling essay Macaulay has shown how Bacon's gospel transfigured civilisation. It has lengthened human life, he says; has mitigated pain; has extinguished diseases; has increased the fertility of the soil; it has given new security to shipping; has spanned huge rivers, has guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth; has lighted up the night with the splendour of the day; has extended the range of human vision, has multiplied the power of the human muscles; has accelerated motion; has annihilated distance; has facilitated intercourse; has enabled man to descend into the depths of the sea; to soar into the sky, to penetrate the noxious recesses of the earth; and to traverse land, sea and air at incredible rates of speed. In this cavalcade of achievement, no one scientist has played a braver part than Thomas Alva Edison. One of the most impressive pages of the New Testament describes the way in which the scientists of an earlier day laid their tributes of gold and frankincense and myrrh at the divine feet. Lives like those of Faraday and Edison prove that, when that act of adoration has once been sincerely performed, science turns from the presence of Deity to the service of Humanity, transforming every phase of human experience in the process.

F W Boreham