Tag: attitude

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Meaning of Life

Imagine you’re at the top of your game and you are successful in everything you put your mind to. You have a great reputation, you have a great job, you have a great family, and your volunteer work makes a difference. Money isn’t a problem, and you lack nothing.

Does this give meaning to your life?

Long ago the world’s richest and wisest man took it upon himself to seek out the meaning of life. In the book of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon decided to investigate how to achieve fulfillment in life. First he tried living a life of pleasure, but learned that this wasn’t the answer. He studied the generalities of life and upon reflection was disappointed that death comes both to the wise man and the fool. He implemented public projects on an enormous scale, only to conclude that his lifetime of achievements could easily be wasted after his death if his successor squanders what he inherits.

Very aware of his own mortality, Solomon realizes that this life is short; it’s fleeting. We busy ourselves with many projects and endeavors, but in the end we all pass through and then move on from this life. Many times in the book of Ecclesiastes does Solomon exclaim “meaningless! It’s all a chasing after the wind!”

The book is almost depressing; he spends 12 chapters exploring different aspects of life in hopes of finding fulfillment, only to realize that even our most notable achievements will be forgotten after a few generations. Then at the very end of the book, almost as an afterthought, Solomon abruptly gives us his conclusion. These two verses, only two verses out of the whole book, provide us insight into what he’s learned. If you give up reading the book before the very end, you miss out on Solomon’s “secret of life:”

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. –Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

After years of experiencing everything life has to offer, Solomon concluded that your purpose is to please God and to live in such a way that you will not fear judgment.

I don’t have the time or space to go into all of God’s commandments here, but I’ll summarize them this way: love God and love people. Each of these topics can have books written about them. It’s a lifelong endeavor, though; there are always opportunities to keep getting better at it.

If you’ve got the “love God” portion down pat, it’s time to “love people.” There are people everywhere you go. You know what I’ve discovered? A lot of them are hard to get along with. It can be draining to interact with them! That’s probably why so much of the Bible talks about how to live and deal with others. Here’s the neat thing: you’re equipped to do it. You have everything you need to do what you’ve been called to do.

For many of us, that calling has to do with making someone’s life better somehow. That’s one exciting (yes, exciting) thing about the Coronavirus-dominated time we’re living through…there are new opportunities to love on people in ways that are not normally available. All you have to do is look for them; you’re in the best position to see them and act on them.

Fear God and keep His commandments, and remember that He’ll judge all of your works. This comes from a lifetime of reflection from the wisest man who ever lived. Just a little something to keep in mind if life gets a little too meaningless for you.

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Play Like There’s No Tomorrow

Graphic courtesy of WEBN/NFL

As a fan of professional football, this is an exciting time of year. It’s playoff season. There are 32 teams in the league and at the end of the regular season only 12 teams extend their season into the playoffs. As of today there are only four teams left. This weekend two games will occur, and the winners of those two games will face off in the Super Bowl during the first weekend of February.

One of the things that make the playoffs so exciting is that anything can happen. This past weekend the team with the best record in the league was eliminated by a team that barely made it into the playoffs. While many of the games in the regular season are blowouts or otherwise unexciting, each team in the playoffs has earned the right to be there. The level of play is elevated and the games are more interesting to watch.

When you’re watching a great game, it’s a shame that one of the teams has to lose and be eliminated. As the game draws near to the end and it becomes more evident which team is facing elimination, you see the desperation as they pull out all the stops. They think bigger; they take more risks. The really exciting games are the ones that aren’t decided until the last play of the game. When teams are neck-in-neck, they both raise their level of play, and the players sometimes seem to find another gear as they push each other to perform at their highest potential.

How is this like the Christian life? Think of it this way: a football game isn’t over until there’s no time left on the game clock. Sure, there are cases where games go to overtime, but the vast majority of games end when the clock runs out. Just like a football game, a Christian only has a finite amount of time to be on the field, making plays for the team and for the coach. After the clock runs out, the impact of the individual’s efforts cannot be changed. What’s done is done, and it’s too late to go back and add anything to it.

While we don’t have the advantage of seeing how much time is left on the clock in our lives, we can still make efforts to “up our game” and play to our full potential. Are you disciplined in your spiritual diet (do you consume good things and avoid bad things)? Are you surrounding yourself with people that push you to operate at your highest level?

When we’re done with this life, we’re going to want to be able to say “I left it all out there on the field.” Don’t keep anything in reserve; use it all up before the clock runs out. If you do that, believe me, the coach is going to take notice.

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Do You Honestly Think That’s a Good Idea?

Even the dogs in Australia are mellow.

When Americans think of Australia, one of the things they think about is the wildlife. Some of the things that might come to mind are kangaroos, crocodiles, koala bears, etc. The tour company I traveled with recognized that, so one of the things they built into the itinerary of our Australian trip was a stop at a zoo that had a lot of these animals.

I’ve been to some zoos here in the states. Things are usually set up so that you can’t get too close, but you usually have an unobstructed view of whatever animal is present. Not this place. It was kind of a cross between a petting zoo and a crocodile kennel. You could hand-feed the kangaroos (maybe they were wallabies), handle snakes, and get close to the emu.

I think the main attraction was probably the crocodiles. The owner was a colorful character. Think of him as an older version of Crocodile Dundee that put on a bit of weight and wasn’t quite so light on his feet anymore. He was fun to be around and took us on a tour of the sights.

I’d guess that this guy had anywhere from six to 12 crocodiles in various chain-link pens throughout the zoo. He brought us around to the various pens, sometimes teaching us about crocs from outside the pen, other times going inside and feeding the crocs a chicken or two.

I was a little surprised by this guy’s willingness to go right into the various pens, and even more surprised at how close he was willing to get to the various animals. He would be within a few feet of the gaping jaws of these enormous monsters, and he’d toss meat into their mouths. He was actually missing a few fingers because he had gotten too close in the past and eager crocs had snapped down quicker than expected.

He seemed so laid back about being in such close proximity to reptiles that could kill him. The only thing he kept nearby was a rake. He used it to scratch the back of some of the crocs to help them relax, but he kept it with him for another purpose. When a croc is getting a little too aggressive and you need to move him back, you can flip the rake around and push on a sensitive spot on their head, and it will back up. We got to see this first-hand when one of the crocs started coming out of its pen. Farmer Dundee here flipped the rake around and pushed the croc back far enough to close the door.

One of the things that struck me the most about this guy was how confident he was in knowing when it was safe and when it was not safe to approach one of the beasts. Again, he was so casual about being in extreme close proximity to crocs that I didn’t know what to think. He actually sat on one of them when he was tired and wanted to take a break.

This guy’s behavior is an example of how we can become so comfortable around danger that we let our guard down and get careless. By the time I met him, this guy had been around crocs for years, but for all I know, he could have been attacked and killed by one of them the next week. You can go for years flirting with danger or something you shouldn’t be around and everything turns out fine; until it doesn’t. You won’t always see it coming, either. That’s why it’s best to simply avoid such situations if at all possible. A few examples might help. If you’re a recovering alcoholic, don’t go meet friends at a bar. Avoid situations where you’re alone with that attractive co-worker. Each of us is more susceptible to certain mistakes than others, but we’re better than we might think when it comes to predicting where things can go south. Let’s assume you’ve got a good head on your shoulders; just because you’re not looking at a guy sitting on a crocodile doesn’t mean you can’t recognize a situation that’s a bad idea.

I don’t blame my crocodile farmer friend for doing what he does, but he has to constantly be on high alert for trouble. Even though he’s had a lot of successful crocodile feedings, he’s still missing some fingers. The lesson here: if you’re perfectly aware of the danger but you intentionally stay near it anyway, don’t expect to come out of it unscathed.

Are there any unnecessary risks in your life you need to stop accepting?

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Too Small To Make a Difference

We’ve got a fireplace at home, and we like having fires once it gets cold. Buying or collecting wood for the fireplace can be a hassle though, and this year we happened upon a different solution. Earlier this summer a nearby neighborhood cut down a lot of trees and sliced the trunks into slabs, leaving them to rot throughout the neighborhood. I actually enjoy splitting wood by hand (especially after aggravating days at work), so I went and picked up a bunch of them and brought them home for splitting and burning.

The problem is that I don’t have an efficient method of splitting the wood. Most people know what an ax is, but not everyone knows what a maul is. A maul is kind of like a sledgehammer with a wedge on one side. When I first started splitting wood earlier this summer though, I didn’t have a full-sized maul. The one I have is meant for splitting pieces of wood that have already been split, but are still a bit too big for the fireplace. It’s kind of a hand-held “mini-maul.”

This tool is great for splitting branches or small trunks that are, say, the diameter of a coffee-can. Once you get into dealing with slabs of trunk though, it becomes much more difficult.

I had a slab I was determined to split up, but it was so big I couldn’t even put my arms around it. Nonetheless, I put it on top of another piece and started looking at the natural grain of the wood, then started taking shots at it. At first the mini-maul just bounced off the wood. A few more shots, and each time the mini maul bounced. Each time the tool struck the wood, though, it left a pock mark. I started striking the slab in a way that the pock marks lined up to create a fault line across it. I didn’t really feel like I was making much progress, so I turned the slab and started doing the same thing in a different direction. Then I did it in yet another direction.

I struck the wood over and over and over again. Sometimes the tool bounced and other times it started penetrating into the wood. I was out there for a long time. My hands got sore and hot, like blisters were starting to form. I was tired, and eventually my shirt was so soaked with sweat that it had almost no dry spots, and I thought about packing it in. I must’ve left nearly a hundred pock marks before anything began happening.

Finally, the sound of the impact changed, and a crack emerged. When it did, it breathed new life into my effort.

Once the crack was established, it was easy to exploit into a split, and things moved quickly from there. After splitting it in two, it only took a few shots to make additional splits in one of the two sides. Those smaller chunks became infinitely easier to break into the size I wanted, often in a single blow.

In the end, this little tool was able to deliver enough targeted force to smash a strong, sturdy slab of oak into about 35 splinters that were shadows of what they once were. All of them were done in by the persistent strikes of a tool that was “too small” to do the job.

It’s an alarming spiritual analogy for those things we do that we know we shouldn’t be doing. It might not be anything major, but it happens again and again. Call it the straw that broke the camel’s back, or call it death by a thousand paper cuts. It’s something that doesn’t seem too bad, in and of itself. It’s not a crushing blow, but it’s something that delivers targeted strike after targeted strike against your Christian walk and, if it’s not stopped, has the ability to cause major damage to your spiritual health and relationships.

Maybe it’s gossip. It could be reading a certain kind of novel. Maybe it’s a glance that lingers longer than it should. Perhaps it’s tension in your marriage that goes unresolved and festers. Doing these things a single time is not something that’s devastating to your spiritual walk, but each of them is something that leaves a pock mark. You may have even told yourself “it’s not a big deal, it doesn’t hurt anybody.” Well, maybe doing it once isn’t a big deal, but have you only done it once? Consider whether your pock marks are aligning in a way that will lead to cracks and problems in the future, maybe soon.

Is there something you’re doing that you know you shouldn’t be doing? If you’re wrapped up in something that hinders your ministry or God-given purpose, even just a little bit, it can affect your ability to make your maximum impact for Christ’s kingdom. Like athletes that train hard to compete at a high level, cut yourself off from things you know aren’t helping you. Don’t run for third place, or for second place; run to win.

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. –Hebrews 12:1-2

I demolished each of these pieces of wood using that mini maul. If you feel you’ve stripped the unneeded junk out of your life, how can you help the “other pieces of wood” around you to do the same, so that they can better resist the onslaught of strikes that hit them every day?
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You’re Affected…But How?

You can tell a lot about where someone’s from by the words they use and the accent they have. Do they call it “soda,” “pop,” “sodapop,” or “coke?” Is it a “lollipop” or a “sucker?” “Do they wear “tennis shoes” or “sneakers?” Is the word “y’all” a part of their vernacular?

As a kid I lived in Pennsylvania. I’m a little biased, but I don’t think I had any kind of accent as a kid. It’s a funny thing though; we had some people move to our neighborhood that came from North Dakota. There were also some grandparents nearby that had long summer visits from a family that lived in Minnesota. As I played and spent time with the kids of these Midwestern families, a funny thing happened…I started saying words the way they did.

Accent map courtesy of the Washington Post

That time spent together influenced the way I spoke. This is a pretty harmless instance of what I’m getting at, but it’s a great example of how you are influenced by your surroundings. You become like the people and attitudes that are around you.

Take a moment to stop and think about the people and attitudes that are a part of your environment. This is where you are headed. You are becoming more like them. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on what kind of people make up your environment.

It’s a two-way street, though. The new neighbors from North Dakota were immersed in a new region, surrounded by people that did not have the same accent as them. For that family’s kids especially, the accent faded with time. You’re not the only one being influenced; you also possess influence over those that are part of your life. Do you exude positivity and an uplifting outlook, or do you drag people down with your presence?

It might be time to re-examine the things and people you have in your life. What kind of friends do you have? What kind of things are you doing together? Other relationships, like family or work, give you fewer options with regard to your ability to choose whether or not to interact with them. In those cases, focus instead on your ability to make a positive difference in your shared environment.

In either case, whether you can choose your associations or not, you have a choice as far as what kind of contribution you will make to your environment.


“whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.” Philippians 4:8