Strange times we’re in. While there are many people that no longer have the job they held a month or two ago, many others now work from home. For those folks, the reality is that sometimes they just can’t produce the same quality from home that they’re able to at their normal place of business. I don’t advocate for shoddy workmanship, but it’s important to understand that if you’ve turned in low-quality work of some kind, all is not lost.
We’ve heard many times that God can take terrible things and use them for good. It’s like saying God loves us. We’ve heard it so many times we lose our appreciation for what it means. What if I told you there’s a story in the Bible where God used someone’s poor-quality work to both glorify Himself and accomplish His will at the same time? That might make you feel better when you’re unable to produce the same quality of work you’re accustomed to turning in.
There’s a story in 1 Kings 20 that has a funny little twist. The Bible often glosses over big events in a very short amount of time, and if you blink, you’ll miss it. In this case, the Israelites were at war with a numerically superior foe, the Arameans. Verse 27 says that the Israelites were like two little flocks of goats, but the Arameans covered the countryside.
The Lord was kinda mad at the Arameans in this engagement, so he enabled the Israelites to cut down 100,000 of their enemy in one day, and verse 30 says that the rest fled into a nearby city. Here’s where you’ll miss it if you blink: “But the rest fled to Aphek into the city, and the wall fell on 27,000 men who were left.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a wall large enough to fall on 27,000 men. In order to have a wall that big fall on so many people at once, we’re talking about failure at a spectacular level. The book doesn’t say anything about how that wall was constructed or what made it collapse; we just know that it happened, it was bad news for the Arameans, and it was all part of God’s plan.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not condoning work that’s intentionally sloppy or poor. If you can’t meet the level of what you’re ordinarily capable of though, do the best you can. There may be a divine purpose for that imperfection later on down the line.
You know, the world has been dealing with a lot of serious stuff lately, so here’s an entry that has no point other than to entertain you.
In Air Force Basic Training, you’re part of a “flight” of anywhere between probably 40-60 people. In my particular flight, we probably had 45-50 guys that all showed up from across America and got thrown together to live in two giant rooms for the duration of Basic Training.
In Basic, we had to travel all over the base on foot. Imagine mass-processing people off the street and turning them into professional Airmen. In order to do this on an industrial scale, there are facilities set up exactly for this purpose. Getting clothing issued, haircuts, physical training, vaccinations, eating three times a day, going to medical appointments, getting financial accounts established, talking to counselors about your career choice and their additional requirements…it all needs to happen in an orderly fashion, and the Air Force has become pretty good at it.
To get anywhere, our instructors needed to march us between locations. I hated marching. Flights would march four trainees abreast and the column would extend as far back as it needed in order to include the entire flight. The tallest people would be in the front, decreasing in height the further back you go in the column. As one of the tallest guys in my flight, I was always very near the front of the group anytime we’d be marching anywhere. That’s fine, except you need to be paying close attention to the instructor’s commands to turn left or right, because you’ll have less time to react than if you’re in the back.
I don’t know what it is about Basic Training, but it has a way of making people that are ordinarily smart into…well…people that aren’t smart. Honest, most of the time I’m a smart guy. Put me in Basic Training, though, and I overthink things, question myself, stumble over my words, and agonize over whether I sufficiently folded my socks. Things that are not normally a big deal become obsessions. I hated Basic.
I don’t remember where we were coming from, but one day we were on our way to lunch. It was old hat for us at this point. Our flight usually got “parked” outside the door while we awaited our turn to go in. As we arrived we could see the “parking space” where our instructor was going to put us, but we needed to do a pair of turns to end up there. This is where I almost got myself into trouble.
To end up in our spot, we could either turn left and then right, or right and then left. I’m not sure what happened, but I somehow got it into my head that our instructor told us to turn right, but the flight of trainees had started turning left. I could have just gone along with everyone else, but in my sleep-deprived state I must have decided that no, we were all going to be punished somehow for not paying attention to the instructor’s verbal commands. Well not this guy!
In a rare flash of independent thought at Basic Training, I decided to strike out on my own and break away from the pack. When the entire column of men in my flight turned left, I turned right.
This was an absurd sight. Hopefully there were no cameras that caught this moment. If there were, I imagine it got lots of air time in the instructors’ lounge. I marched at the same cadence as everyone else, but in the opposite direction. Our instructor either didn’t notice or pretended not to see me. He gave the command for the second turn, and I don’t know which direction he said, but I didn’t care anymore, and took the opportunity to start moving back to rejoin the flight. I met back up perfectly with the group and slipped right back into the spot I had just left.
I don’t think anyone ever said anything to me, and to this day I honestly don’t know who was right (though I tend to believe the massive group of people who turned left probably outweighs the single schmuck who turned right and was out there marching around on his own).
I guess it’s true what they say…I’ve always marched to the beat of my own drum. Thankfully it didn’t land me in hot water this time!
Hey, don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself. It’s rough out there these days, but things are looking up. Wash your hands and avoid groups of people, but if you think you can make someone smile with something as dumb as a story like this, go for it. We could all use a smile right now.
There’s an old
problem-solving technique called “The Five Whys.” It’s simple in its execution.
You start with a problem:
We can’t go on the vacation we’ve been planning.
Ask: Why? (Number 1)
We had to spend a big chunk of that money on a car
repair.
Ask: Why? (Number 2)
The car broke down unexpectedly.
Ask: Why? (Number 3)
(Sheepishly) Because I haven’t been maintaining it.
The idea is that by the
time you’ve asked “Why?” five times, you’ve arrived at the root cause of the problem
you’re facing.
King David is one of
the most famous characters in the Bible. He had incredible highs and also some
very low lows. In the end, this “man after God’s own heart” was an imperfect
human, but he always sought God’s mercy and forgiveness.
His most famous shortcoming
occurred with a beautiful woman named Bathsheba. Here’s a quick refresher from 2 Samuel chapter 11:
11 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.
2One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her.
Bathsheba, of course, became pregnant. David made matters
worse by trying to cover it up, and when that didn’t work, he had Bathsheba’s
husband intentionally killed in battle. It took a prophet to confront him in
order to make him admit his wrongdoing. While there’s much we can learn
from David, we’ll focus on this tragic tale and try to apply a lesson to our
own lives. Let’s use the “Five Whys” with David’s situation:
David got taken to task by Nathan the prophet for murdering an innocent man.
Why? (Number 1)
David ordered the death of Uriah, one of his faithful warriors.
Why? (Number 2)
He had an affair with Uriah’s wife Bathsheba.
Why? (Number 3)
David saw her bathing on the rooftop and decided that he had to have her.
Why? (Number 4)
He wasn’t where he was supposed to be, fighting with his army at Rabbah.
And here we have the root cause. The text doesn’t say why David remained
behind in Jerusalem; it just says that he did. By not being with his army, as
was the custom of the day’s kings, it opened the door to temptation, which
resulted in adultery, lies, and murder.
While you may not be in charge of an army, there’s probably been at least one time in your life when
something bad happened because you were somewhere you didn’t belong.
The lesson here? Be where you’re supposed to be.
If you’re a Christ-follower, God has equipped and tasked you to perform
certain functions or roles here on Earth. Once you know what He wants you to
do, you can either run from it (think Jonah) or you can work toward it (think
Paul). The road is never guaranteed to be easy, but there’s peace of mind when
you work toward it. Running from it causes restlessness, unrest, and numerous
complications.
The simplest way to avoid all of that? Be where you’re supposed to be.
My wife is one of four
sisters, and each one of them is married with kids. The four families are
spread out across the country, but when we can make it happen, it’s fun to get
together.
A few times in the
past, after most of the kids go down for the night, the parents have pulled out
board games. It usually ends up that the teams get split into husbands vs.
wives. The hubbies are able to squeak out wins in some games, but the wives are
freakishly dominant when it comes to Pictionary.
I don’t know what it
is; maybe all that time spent together as kids developed some kind of shared
consciousness or something. It’s actually embarrassing to be on the other team.
One of the sisters will be halfway into drawing a stick figure when another one
shouts “ooh, ooooh…the Berlin Wall!” “YES! You got it!” Or one of them might
draw a circle, and a half second later two of them will simultaneously yell “an
apple a day keeps the doctor away!” After that the artist excitedly points at
them and shouts “Yes, that’s it!”
Team Hubby just sits
there bewildered, looking at the drawing, then at each other. The ladies are
either extremely good at cheating and not letting us find out about it, or they
benefit from a collection of minds that are on the same wavelength, with a
singular focus and common understanding.
Oddly enough, that’s
sometimes how Christianity works. I love hearing stories about how God weaves lives together to benefit one
or more of them. Believers (and even unbelievers) become answers to urgent
prayers. Complete strangers walk up to someone and, prompted only by the Holy
Spirit, hand over money that the recipient desperately needed. Collectively, people
employ their different spiritual gifts or use their various resources to
achieve improbable or unique feats.
At times Christians work
together without any earthly coordination. Something from your devotions
combines with a “random” song on the radio and something you read (maybe even
this blog!) to result in a message that’s being shouted at the hearer.
The hearer asks “what
does this mean?” Well, if you’re the one hearing it, you’re the one that’s in
the best position to make sense of it. Continue praying and seeking God’s
guidance for your life. Not just once or twice more, but each day, multiple
times a day, and He will eventually make it clear. Once He does, act on it.
It’s your ticket to being a part of the freakishly dominant team.
PS – No, we don’t play
Pictionary at family events anymore. The wives see that Team Hubby is getting
bent out of shape, so they let us win other stuff and act like we won through
our raw talent.
I used to love going kneeboarding. You kneel on a board
and get pulled behind a boat, skimming across the top of the water. It’s not as
popular as waterskiing or wakeboarding, but I had a lot of fun doing it.
When I was new to it, it was really cool just to get
going and go back and forth across the wake. Then you start doing little
tricks, like 360s or riding backwards. Then you start hitting the wake a little
harder to get some air. Then you start hitting it really hard to see how far
you can jump.
After hitting the wake hard and getting a decent
amount of air, somehow I got it into my head that I wanted to pull off a barrel
roll. Now that I’m older and wiser, I know that we just didn’t have the right
setup to make this trick work, but back then I didn’t know it was impossible. I
was willing to try it as many times as I could. Each time I wanted to get just
a little closer to making it happen, but there was always a point in the
rotation past which I couldn’t go.
I tried dozens of times, but always ended up falling into the water without the board rotating around nearly enough. I even bought a video camera (when such things existed) and had someone in the boat film what was going on so I could try to learn from my mistakes. I have film somewhere of me rolling between 180 and 270 degrees over and over again. I’d land on my head or I’d land on my side, the kneeboard would go flying up into the air, and it never once worked out for me.
What none of us knew at the time is that I couldn’t
pull off the roll without mounting the rope at a higher point on the boat. The
boat’s pylon – the point where the rope I hung onto was connected to the boat –
was fine for waterskiing and even basic kneeboarding, but it simply was not
going to allow me to achieve what I wanted to do. The professionals that
successfully do these tricks use boats with elevated mounts. That way when the
kneeboarders hit the wake and make it into the air, the boat is not only
pulling them forward, but slightly upward as well. It’s not a lot, but it helps
provide just a little bit of extra hang time that makes a huge difference in
the person’s overall ability to perform tricks.
People are like that too. Each person is unique in
their own story, but there’s usually a ceiling of some kind that everyone hits.
It could be trying to find contentment, get past guilt, grant forgiveness, or
even trying to establish a ministry. Whatever it is, people need to be
connected to something higher than just the basic level. You hit your limit a
lot sooner when you’re doing it on your own, and you need that extra boost that
only comes from God.
Work diligently and don’t be afraid to put yourself out there, but remember to ask God for help and to guide your steps in any effort that glorifies Him. When you work hard to complete the assignment God’s given you, He provides that little boost that makes all the difference. He may not provide it exactly when you want it or exactly how you anticipate it, but He gives it to you. It’s the thing that makes a huge difference in your overall ability to perform His work.
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I sat in the van, more
than a little worried. Remnants of a hurricane had swollen the river to a level
that wasn’t safe for recreational canoe usage, which became painfully obvious
on our last canoe run. Earlier in the afternoon another lifeguard and I had
accompanied a group of canoers on our standard trip, but one pair of boaters
somehow managed to broadside a bridge pillar. The current was so strong that it
dumped the boaters and bent the canoe around the pillar. My boss, Allen, and I were
on our way to retrieve the “shipwrecked” canoe, and I was a teenager
that was getting less and less comfortable.
Herb, the director of
the Christian conference center where I worked, was driving us upriver. The
plan was that we’d get into a single canoe, paddle over to the spot where the bent
canoe was still pinned against the bridge pillar, and break it loose. If it was
in good enough shape, one of us would transfer to it and we’d each paddle a
canoe back home. If it was too damaged for that, we’d both remain in the same
canoe and tow the damaged one behind us.
We could see the pinned
canoe from the boat ramp. I buckled my life jacket and climbed into the front
of our canoe. Allen skipped a life jacket, but had a rescue tube (one of those
big red floats that you see pool lifeguards standing around with) wedged under
his seat. We shoved off and right away got swept into the bright brown water’s
swift current.
The river moved so
quickly that we barely had to paddle. As we approached the bridge, we started
paddling backwards to slow ourselves down. We slowed down perfectly, turned so
we were parallel with the pinned canoe, and gently bumped up against it. A
perfect docking.
The problem was the current
was moving so quickly that when it crashed against the bridge pillar and the two
canoes, it pillowed up and created undercurrents that we couldn’t see or
anticipate. Even though we sat completely still in relation to the shore, the
water churned and frothed angrily beneath us as the river pounded the keel
relentlessly. Our boat shuddered, then flipped over, dumping us both upstream.
That water was flowing hard. I didn’t even have time to be
pinned against the canoe; I got dumped in and immediately got swept under the
boat. I was able to get a hand onto the side of the boat, and hung onto it with
one hand, and held the paddle in the other. I was laid out horizontally,
completely underwater, flapping in the current like a flag on a windy day.
I had no idea where
Allen was or what his status was. He had probably safely cleared everything and
was downstream by now, but maybe he had managed to hang on somehow. In the
event that he was still there somewhere, I needed to get into a position where
we could make something happen. I needed to breathe, but if I let go, not only
would I be unable to help Allen with recovering the canoe, but the attempt
would be over because he’d have to abandon the recovery effort and come after
me. Still horizontal underwater, I tried to do a chin-up so I could get my face
out of the water enough to catch a breath and maybe see where Allen was, but
the current was so strong I couldn’t do it. I think I tried again, probably
with both hands this time, but it still wasn’t working. With no choice (and not
knowing how long it would be before the river let me get to the surface), I let
go and got flung into the current, now at the whim of the river.
Honestly, when I
surfaced, I expected to see Allen downriver. When I came up though, I didn’t
see him. I turned and looked upriver, but didn’t see him there, either. I couldn’t
see him anywhere. The only place he could be was still with the canoe, somewhere
underwater.
The current pushed me
into the eddy behind the pillar, but I was about to be carried out of it. Once
I left the eddy, there would be no chance of getting back upstream. Allen was
in the process of drowning about 20 feet away from me; I swam with everything I
had, but I barely got anywhere.
While I was still
fighting to get upstream, he popped through the surface. I found out later that
the strap to the rescue tube wedged under his seat had somehow wrapped around
his leg, so even though he wasn’t hanging onto the canoe at all, the canoe was
hanging onto him. He had been dangling by his knee at the end of a strap,
batted around underwater without any way of getting air. It must’ve been his
guardian angel that shook the rescue tube loose from under his seat.
Just relieved that we
were both alive, my sense of humor returned. While we were still drifting
downstream, I asked him “well, do you want to try again?” Thankfully
he said “uh, no.” We were able to swim to shore and get out of the
water, but we were down another
canoe.
What would’ve happened
if Allen’s rescue tube hadn’t come loose? Could I have made it far enough
upstream to be able to help him at all? If it meant I would exhaust myself, what
should I have done, considering I’d probably still need a good reserve of strength
if we both needed to rely on me to get out of the jam we were still in? Thankfully,
I didn’t have the chance to think of any of this at the time. Allen bobbed to
the surface before I had time to think about it.
This event helped put
things in perspective for me. In this life, there are things you can control
and there are things you can’t. When you can’t handle it, God will take care of
it. If the only way out of a situation is via something that’s beyond you, there’s
only so much you can bring to the table, and you have to rely on Him for the
rest. Life has countless opportunities for you to bear witness to the fact that
you’re not in control as much as you like to think you are. Every day brings
new challenges, and a lot of them need God-sized help to overcome.
It’s important to remember that if God hands you an
assignment that you’re totally confident that you’ll be able to accomplish, the
task just might be too small. By all means do
it, but recognize that if it’s something you can handle on your own, there’s
not much room for God to be glorified. On the other hand, if you get to be part
of something that you could in no way have accomplished on your own, it’s
harder to take the credit for it. I give all the credit to God for shaking
Allen loose and granting us overall safety that day, and pray that recounting
this story glorifies Him further.
(Also, hypothetically,
if you ever find yourself in a similar situation with shipwrecked canoes, don’t
forget to call the local fire/rescue folks and let them know that everyone’s
safe and accounted for. Otherwise, someone will eventually report two canoes
pinned against a bridge, the rescue team will get all kinds of excited, and
then they’ll let you have an earful when they find out what actually happened
and that you didn’t fill them in.)
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One day when my
youngest daughter was four, she asked Mommy if she could have a lollipop. It
was too late in the evening to let her have it though, so my wife told her she
could have one the next day. Sure enough, our little one remembered the next
day:
“Mom? Is it tomorrow?”
“Yes, today’s the
tomorrow we talked about yesterday.”
It’s an off-the-cuff,
but profound saying. “Today’s the tomorrow we talked about yesterday.” When you
think about it, each of us is the product of our past choices and experiences.
You are the person you are today because of the things you’ve gone through.
If you could go back
and change something somewhere along the line…erase a mistake…capitalize on the
knowledge you have now…you’d have a new set of experiences. You’d no longer be
the person you are.
You are the person God knew you’d be at this point. He can, and (if you let Him) He will use you to do great things for His kingdom. All the mistakes, all the missed opportunities, along with all the high points, milestones, and celebrations…they helped shape who you are right now. Because of who you are, with your placement and background, there’s something that only you are equipped to do for God’s glory.
In the same way, the
things you experience today will shape your tomorrow. This includes not only
the things that happen to you, but the situations you place yourself into. The
choices you make hold tremendous bearing over what will happen to your future.
Make sure you’re making good ones.
Tomorrow will soon be
here; will your future self be thankful for what you’re doing today?
Were you ever successful on your first attempt to do something tricky? If you’re fortunate enough to say ‘yes,’ I wouldn’t get used to that being the norm.
After college I worked for a construction company for about a year and a half before leaving for the Air Force. During the summers we started at 6:30 or 7 in the morning so we could escape some of the heat of the late afternoon. Getting off work at 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon meant there was still plenty of time to get to the pool before it closed.
This was the same pool where I had spent a few summers lifeguarding. When I worked at the pools, I got the chance to watch people do some pretty cool things off the diving boards. I never really had the chance to try it out though, because I was either working or hurrying to get something done so I could move on to the next thing.
I’m not really sure what triggered it, but one day after work when I was at the pool, I decided that I wanted to try a “one and a half” off the diving board. I’m not sure if there’s a better name than that for it, but if you do a flip off the diving board and land in the water feet first, that’s “one.” A one and a half is when you do a flip, but keep rotating another half revolution and enter the water hands/headfirst in a dive.
You have to understand that back then I had a higher tolerance for pain. Working in construction means you’re constantly dealing with bruises, knicks, bumps, drops, even a few slams here and there. For whatever reason, on that day, I was willing to accept some pain in order to perform a one and a half.
Failure after failure ensued. I’m on the tall side, so it took me a bit to figure out how to deal with under-rotation. Rotating 360 degrees is good, and rotating the desired 540 degrees is good, but when you’re somewhere in between those two, it’s ugly and painful (especially when you’re spinning fast and your face is the first thing to hit the water). Some of the flops forced my eyes open underwater, some of them wrenched my neck back, and some of them just stung when I hit the water the wrong way.
I was finally able to do it. The secret was twofold: you had to tuck in your legs almost like you’re doing a cannonball, and you had to spin full speed in order to get the full rotation. It was the most bizarre feeling to be spinning so fast that your face starts warping and you had to use your arms to pull your knees close to your chest or they’d fly away from it. Weird as it was, it was the only way to make it work.
I don’t think I’ve ever done another one and a half since that day. I just wanted to figure it out for myself and be able to say that I had done it. Here’s the important takeaway from this little story: in order to reach my goal, I had to be willing to fail. Boy, did I fail. And I didn’t just fail once, I failed MANY times (sometimes in an epic way). In the end, I failed more times than I was successful, but the eventual success somehow made the failures seem less important.
Some of you are afraid of failure. Why? Maybe you’re afraid of someone seeing you miss the mark. Maybe you think that it will result in people labeling you as someone with poor judgment. It might be because you’re afraid of what will happen if you succeed. Whether it’s ego, fear, embarrassment, whatever it is, ask yourself if the reason you don’t try is because of something that’s only in your head.
I think this is a recurring theme in this blog: in your Christian life, God will challenge you to do things that you think you’re going to fail at. That’s fine. It’s okay to fear failure. Don’t miss the next part, though. Fearing the possibility of failure is not a valid excuse for not trying. If God hands you an assignment that takes the wind out of your sails, I can guarantee the little voice that starts whispering to you “there’s just no way” is not a part of God’s team. If someone who’s not on God’s team starts trying to put ideas in your head, do you think you should put any stock in them?
Today I heard someone say “People don’t want to be preached to; they want to be summoned.” They want to be called, invited, to be a part of something. God will summon you to do something big, and He will pick YOU for a specific reason. You may not know why, but it’s part of His master plan. Nobody else on the entire planet has the exact combination of experiences, gifts, talents, and resources that you do. If God’s calling you to be a part of something, don’t let the possibility of failure stop you from getting started. Your obedience can unleash something you never saw coming, and open the door for others to be a part of something bigger than you could have expected.
After I started going to Paddle Sports pool sessions in college, I got hooked. (See this post for a refresher.) It’s a little tricky to learn how to kayak in college, though. Unless you’re in summer school, you miss out on some of the year’s best kayaking weather. You start a new academic year at the end of summer, so even if you start playing around with kayaks in the pool right at the beginning of the school year, you’re going to have to work very hard at it to get out in the whitewater before winter.
Fortunately there was a happy medium near where I went to school in western New York state. There was a canal that flowed along (I think it was the city of) Rochester; parallel to the canal some group had built a kayak course. A kayak course is a series of 25 gates that paddlers are supposed to go through in sequence without touching any of the poles with any part of your boat, paddle, or you. You’re supposed to go through green gates while moving downstream, and red ones while coming back upstream. The water wasn’t flowing fast, but it was moving enough to make a difference between paddling in a pool and paddling in real water. It was a good way to work on technique, control, and gain a better understanding of how kayaks handle in moving water.
Since this was my first time in a kayak outside of a pool, I wasn’t very fast. On my first run I moved through the course slowly, trying to figure out how a kayak behaves in a current, seeing where I was going to need to make turns, cut across areas of hardest flow, and spot the more difficult places in the course. In a rookie moment, I even flipped over and couldn’t right myself. Embarrassingly, I had to slip out of my capsized kayak in a shallow little pool of water as these much better paddlers zoomed through the course. Even that was important though, as it was my first bailout in moving water (I’ll have a future post about a much more dramatic bailout later).
It’s kind of a strange tie-in, but in your service to Christ even your perceived failures are important. If you find yourself needing to bail out of a kayak, it’s probably because you’ve failed at righting yourself. Once you get used to bailing out of a kayak in a swimming pool, it becomes very easy, because there’s no current, there’s no major danger, and there’s probably someone standing by, ready to jump in and help you if you really need it. Bailing out in moving water, even on a little course like this, is different. The water’s cold, you’re wearing a life jacket, helmet, and other gear you don’t normally wear in the pool, and if you open your eyes underwater, you’re not going to see much. Whether it’s kayaking or some other aspect of life, failing during difficult circumstances increases your confidence and abilities during easier circumstances. Failures can make you better.
There’s an expression for attempting something that you’re probably not qualified or equipped to try. It’s called “punching above your weight.” In boxing, the two fighters in a given bout are generally very close in weight. That’s to make sure that the fight is fair. If two boxers are both in great shape, with little or no fat on either one of them, yet one is 60 pounds heavier than the other, it’s probably not going to be a fair fight. When fighters are very close to being the same weight, they might have different body types, but they’re close to being evenly matched. If you’re punching above your weight, it means you’re taking on someone that has an advantage in defeating you. In the Bible story of David and Goliath, David was definitely punching above his weight according to men’s standards. By taking on an obstacle or challenge that’s “beyond your weight class,” it makes the challenges that are in your weight class seem easy. Over time it also brings once-feared challenges within your class, and prepares you to take on something bigger and more formidable.
To continue with the kayaking course…as I spent time trying to figure out the best way to approach certain portions of the course, I started paying attention to how other kayakers were doing it. It was fun to see them shoot through the course and try different approaches to the various gates. “That was a cool move…oh, okay, and that set him up for the next gate.” I learned by watching others, and by listening to conversations that more experienced paddlers were having.
You might see where I’m going with this. The people you surround yourself with are the people whose attitudes, habits, and characteristics you adopt. You become more like them. Hanging out with people that are better or more experienced at something than you are will make you better at it. It’s tough to maintain a strong drive to improve if you’re already the most capable one in a group. Similarly, if you hang out with people with negative attitudes, poor character, or bad habits, it’s a fair bet that you’ll soon find yourself with the same outlook as them or doing the same things they are.
God’s going to give you challenges in life. Some you’ll feel confident about handling and some you’ll be more doubtful about. You might even fail at some of them, but it will be for a reason/purpose that you might not see right away. Some people get discouraged by failure and stop attempting the grand things, opting instead to take on things they believe they have a more reasonable chance of accomplishing.
It’s good to share your wisdom and experience with people less skilled than you, but also understand that this practice won’t help you grow your skills, it will only slow their atrophy. By all means mentor or teach those folks, but remember to spend time punching above your weight, too. It will make your current weight class seem easy, and that overwhelming challenge seem a bit less scary.
Time to open the floor for discussion. Has God ever placed a seemingly impossible obstacle in your path, only for Him to walk you through it successfully?
When I was in early elementary school, the only kids in my neighborhood that were anywhere near my age were girls. I got pretty sick of watching them play Barbies. That’s why it was so exciting when a guy named Mario moved into the neighborhood. He was a few grades ahead of me, but he was my first neighborhood buddy that was a guy. It was great to finally do guy stuff…we would go exploring in the woods, play street hockey, build forts, get muddy, you name it.
One day Mario had an idea. He had a skateboard that he decided to modify. You have to understand that today’s skateboards looked nothing like the popular skateboards of back then. Today’s models are lightweight to make it easier to get them off the ground. Back then, the bigger and sturdier, the better. If a mechanic from that era misplaced the creeper that he or she would use for sliding under a vehicle, they could’ve used a skateboard as a substitute without much of a problem.
Mario’s idea was to take this giant skateboard and nail a big piece of plywood on top. After he did, it was big enough for us both to sit on it at the same time and ride down a hill. I’m not sure how we came up with the name, but we called it “The Beta Mobile.” We didn’t really know why, but it sounded cool, so we went with it. To test it out we took it over to the hill in front of the house where I grew up. The modern-day street in front of that house has speed bumps (probably because of the stuff we did on that hill), but back then there weren’t any. The hill had two parts; the first one was long and had a gentler slope, while the second one was shorter, but dropped pretty quickly.
In classic little-boy fashion, we didn’t look for a smaller hill. We just climbed on and didn’t really give much thought to how to slow down if we needed to. I sat in the front, and he sat behind me, bobsled style. We shoved off, and away we went.
We built up speed down the first hill, and we stopped accelerating as the hill flattened out, but then we hit the second hill. We sped up to where it felt like we were going to lift off the ground. To a kid that was accustomed to getting roped into playing house, this was awesome! I was having fun until Mario had another idea. Off to the side there was a house whose owner had paved a little portion of her yard so she could park another vehicle off the street, but in order to keep rainwater from running into her yard, the part that bordered the lawn formed into a big ridge. To Mario, this ridge looked like a nice big jump to try to hit with the Beta Mobile.
“Hit that jump!” He yelled, leaning toward it.
“Noooooo!” I yelled back, leaning the other way.
The way it worked out, I guess I was sitting in the better spot for steering, because we stayed on the road and flew right past the jump. The Beta Mobile slowed down as the road started sloping upward again, and we came to a stop, satisfied that we would be able to do mega-cool things with the Beta Mobile.
As we walked back up to the top of the hill for another run, I forgot about the jump. We decided we’d try to go a little faster this time, but this time we switched places and I was in the back. Again we shoved off and started picking up speed.
We flew down the first hill, and as we started down the second one, I remembered the jump, remembered that we had switched places, and I had a terrible thought. It was too late, though. As we drew near the jump, I leaned away from it about as hard as I could, but it didn’t matter. Mario had the better leverage for steering, and he pointed us toward the jump. We hit it going nearly full speed.
What happened next was something straight out of a Calvin & Hobbes comic. The bodies of two grade-school boys and a gigantic piece of plywood with wheels went tumbling and flipping through the air, crashing onto the lawn. As we lay motionless, moaning on the grass, the front door to the house across the street opened up, and a man in his 80s stepped outside, applauding and shouting “yaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy!”
That was the last time I got on the Beta Mobile with Mario.
As you look around for ways that you can do more with your time and energy to glorify God, you’re going to have the opportunity to partner with fellow believers. For small endeavors it probably won’t be such a big deal, but as you move on to bigger projects, be sure that you’re on the same page with your co-laborers. Talk about your vision for what you’re working on together. You might both have good intent, but if you’re “leaning in different directions,” it’s probably not going to work out the way you’re all envisioning.
Follow God’s prompting, but game it out ahead of time with your partner(s). If you don’t, you might end up in a spectacular wreck, sprawled out in a daze, but your audience might not be so enthusiastic as the one we had that day.
