At that moment, the flight attendant looked a row behind me and spotted an empty window seat on the prized exit row. She motioned to the young lady that she could go back to that seat rather than end up in a middle seat. A small reward for a kind gesture.

As the flight attendant pointed toward the exit row seat, a man shouted, “No way! I’ve claimed that seat. It’s my seat. She can’t have it.”

Everyone in the vicinity, especially the flight attendant was too stunned to know what to say. The young lady just said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll just sit here.” And she cheerfully took her place in 14-E.

The young man then loudly asked the flight attendant, “When are you going to close the door? I want to move to that seat.” The flight attendant murmured, “Now.”

As the plane began taxiing down the runway, the young man flipped on his phone and began a rather self important conversation with someone, loud enough for all to hear. At last an exasperated off duty flight attendant turned and chastised him, saying, “What about turning off your cell phone don’t you understand?” The reply was an apology dripping with sarcasm as the plane lifted off, the noise drowning out what I’m sure were the choice phrases.

I don’t know who Mr. Full-of-Himself was or what company he represented. I know I wouldn’t do business with him or his company…ever.

The daily grind of the business world is made bearable by the common courtesies we extend to one another. It’s easy in the business travel environment to focus on our own needs and survival. We all try to create little bubbles of space around us to deal with the pressure, the pace, and the inconveniences. But we can never be so self-absorbed that we miss the opportunities to extend a helping hand, share an act of kindness, or provide a word of encouragement along the way. These are moments of grace and beauty that offset the gray and hurried world in which we travel; our modern day equivalent of a cup of water to one who is thirsty.

Thanks, to the young lady seated in 14-E. You’ve reminded me of the good we can do each day.

Malcolm Gladwell
Outliers – The Story of Success , (p. 137), Little, Brown and Company, 2008
The sense of possibility so necessary for success comes not just from inside us or from our parents. It comes from our time: from the particular opportunities that our particular place n history presents us with. For a young would-be lawyer, being born in the early 1930s was a magic time, just as being born in 1955 was for a software programmer, or being born in 1835 was for an enterpreneur.

Esther 4:14
For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”

The other day I asked a friend for prayer. The exact words I used were “for God to enlarge my time.”

I know that is not really a fair request, expecting that God might bend space and time just for my own sense of personal productivity. But the many obligations and opportunities have been weighing on me.

Maybe what I was really asking was for some help in getting done all the things that are before me right now that, at the moment, are looking quite impossible.

It’s not that they’re all deadline-driven, although that is some of it. There is the stuff that goes along with my job, of course, which keeps growing and getting more challenging. But there is also a long list of other things that I want to do, because they are good opportunities: more writing, blogging and speaking on this subject of integrating work and spiritual life, for instance. And then there is my family - investing time into my marriage to keep it fresh and strong; and being a good father to my two teen-age daughters who need a strong model of good character now more than ever.

Instead of relishing a sense of accomplishment in all these things, lately I feel like I should be fully qualified to teach a course on Time Mismanagement. There are so many things on my to-do list that haven’t been crossed off, looming large but remaining in a suspended state of existence – a productivity purgatory – as they cast their ominous shadows over my daily schedule. It’s become so unmanageable that I am prone to just crumpling up that list after a while and throwing it away to start over again. That won’t make those tasks go away, but it might feel like a fresh start.

I am having trouble getting to it all. It would be so nice to feel caught up, just for a little while.

I know all about the practical advice:

Delegate!

Clean off your desk!

Prioritze!

Make an instant decision on every piece of information that comes before you!

Simplify!

But the tangled knot of my life can not be torn out like a page from a magazine.

If I start thinking about it too much, the weight of all that is unresolved, unfinished, and left undone feels as if it might just about chase me down and crush me at times.

Maybe I expect too much?

I must accept the fact that there are simply going to be many loose ends. And even more, I must trust in an infinite, loving God who knows the path before me, and who will provide grace enough to see me through.

So, for now, I will rest in that.

Bradley J. Moore is an executive in a large corporation in the Northeast which shall remain nameless. He posts regularly at shrinkingthecamel.com and every Tuesday at the High Callings Blog. Brad’s writing has also been featured in The Conference Board Review magazine and The Chicago Sun Times.

Pink talked about Karl Duncker’s candle problem and variations of his experiment that explored the science of motivation.  One experiment asked a group to solve this problem and explained that it would be timed to established norms. A second group was offered financial incentives. If you were in the top 20% of the fastest times, you would receive five dollars. If you were the fastest of everyone, you would receive twenty dollars.

The results were obvious, right? The second group, motivated by financial incentives, took on average 3.5 minutes longer. Yes, longer. Would this work in third world countries and developing economies? Yes. This study has been replicated over 40 years across numerous cultures.

What is basic knowledge in the social sciences should have been an epiphany in the corporate world, but this hasn’t occurred yet. Dan Pink went on to explain how extrinsic motivators, such as carrots and money, work for simple tasks, but not for complicated tasks.

He stated, “If you want engagement, self-direction works better.”

As long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance. But once the task called for “even rudimentary cognitive skill,” a larger reward “led to poorer performance.
— D. Adriely, U. Gneezy, G. Lowenstein, & N. Mazar, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Pink’s talk sent me back to my high school years where I recalled listening to the common sermon on storing up treasures in heaven (Matthew 6: 19-14) and being turned off. I remember thinking as a young believer, “Why would the idea of storing up riches in heaven motivate me at all? If accumulating wealth didn’t interest me as a non-believer, why would it interest me as a believer?”

Reflecting back on all those sermons, I don’t remember a pastor ever analyzing this and bringing out God’s wisdom that was as insightful as Dan Pink’s talk. Maybe these pastors should have read what Pink discovered. Of course, part of my lack of recall could have been due to my own ignorance since I incorrectly assumed these pastors were discussing a similar monetary system would be established in heaven as on earth. Heavenly dollars? Who cares about storing up treasures in heaven?

Now since I’m a bit older and a little more informed, I realized after listening to Pink’s talk that God already knew this about us.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Matthew 6:21

The treasure that motivates us in what’s in our hearts. Hopefully as believers it’s Christ and God’s words for us. It’s not a promise of material wealth that will motivate people to change and live a life to glorify God, but the relationship that God offers—the daily sanctuary, peace, joy, wisdom and love that he freely gives.

John MacArthur has a great story on this:

During the time of the Decian persecution in Rome, the Roman authorities broke into a certain church thinking they could loot their treasures. The Roman prefect who was in charge stepped up to one saint named Laurentius and said, “Show me your treasures at once.” Laurentius pointed to a group of widows and orphans who happened to be eating a meal and said, “There are the treasures of the church. We have invested all we have in them.” That is treasure in heaven. Beloved, remember that what we keep we lose, and what we invest with God we gain eternally.

So if pastors and Christian leaders would pierce into God’s wisdom on the question of what motivates people, how would this reflect on their sermons? Their actions?

As business executives and managers, how does this affect your approach in working with your colleagues? I assume, to understand people better, you would first have to learn more about them and try to see where their hearts lie. This sounds like a commitment of time to me. Some people are open books, but most take time to reveal their hearts. If you can’t find any widows and orphans, investing in the people around you is a good start to building up your treasures in heaven.

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world, rather than on Christ.
— Paul, Colossians 2:8

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Any significant change can come only by breaking the stranglehold of the ideas and concepts that automatically shunt aside Jesus, ‘the Prince of Life,’ when questions of concrete mastery of our life arise. More than any other single thing, the practical irrelevance of actual obedience to Christ accounts for the weakened effect of Christianity in the world today, with its increasing tendency to emphasize political and social action as the primary way to serve God. It also accounts for the practical irrelevance of Christian faith to individual character development and overall personal sanity and well-being.
—  Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p. xv

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Encounter 12: Lord of the Sabbath

Luke 6:1-5

¹One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. ²Some of the Pharisees asked, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”

³Jesus answered them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? ⁴He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” ⁵Then Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

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Some Observations

• Jesus and his disciples are walking through the grainfields. A light wind is rustling the stalks, swaying gently as they cut a swath through. We are there with them.
• These guys are always together and Jesus uses every opportunity to impart understanding. To what degree do I entertain the sense of being with Jesus through the day?
• The disciples are hungry and pick grain to eat.
• The Pharisees (do you get the sense these guys are always following Jesus around trying to catch him doing something wrong?) immediately declare that he is breaking the law by “working” on the Sabbath.
• Jesus refers to scripture as the precedent on which he is about to build his argument, again demonstrating his thorough knowledge and instinctual reliance upon the biblical writings to help work through each situation that arises. What are my instinctual precedents in decision-making and conflicts?
• The passage he refers to (I Samuel 21:1-6) has David – in his warrior era – procuring consecrated (holy) bread from a terrified priest for his hungry men to eat.
• Jesus is doing three things here:
• First, he is claiming to be Lord of the Sabbath – again proclaiming his deity and, by default, his precedence over any religious formalities.
• Second, Jesus is showing his purposeful pragmatism, which we will continue to see throughout his life. In other words, he chooses to knowingly “break” religious law to meet the needs of his men . . . in this case, to meet their hunger. Are there religious scruples, the breaking of which—even by Jesus—would offend me?
• Third, Jesus knows that the purpose of the Fourth Commandment to, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy” (Exodus 20:8) is to recognize God’s six days of creation and seventh day of rest; this day is set aside for worship, rather than work. By allowing his disciples to pick and eat grain, Jesus is demonstrating that, while the spirit of the law is to honor God by not making the Sabbath a day of work, meeting basic human needs take precedence over the legalistic interpretation applied by the Pharisees. When the law becomes a mechanism to judge others and honor ourselves, we can be sure that we are far from the spirit of the law as God intended.
• In this encounter, the disciples are on a “holy mission” with Jesus just as David and his men are described in 1 Samuel.
• There are deep implications here for how we serve others. The “holy mission” of Jesus should take precedence over our preoccupation with somehow breaking religious ritual or expectation in how this should be conducted. Have I failed to serve anyone because doing so might call my reputation into question?
• This is not an excuse to go around doing things solely to tweak legalists or a release from our call to seek righteousness.
• Rather, it opens up new possibilities, encourages creativity and removes some constraints as to how the mission of Jesus – healing, redemption, restoration, liberation, etc. – is pursued.
• The guys who run Triple X Church, an outreach to the porn industry, exemplify this. They go to the big porn convention in Vegas (of course drawing criticism) and set up a booth . . . and build relationships and friendships with people in the business who are curious about what they are doing there. As a result, God has used their relational ministry to “set free” many of the folks to live redeemed lives. But they do not go to the convention to protest, shame or preach, simply to show Jesus’ love to the people there and take the risk and trust that the Holy Spirit is at work.
• (I am not advocating that everyone is called to this ministry – for many believers that struggle with sexual sin, this would likely create more problems than purpose . . . plenty of other opportunities to be used by God to bless people out there!)
• Again, this is not to say that conventional approaches to ministry are ineffective; being unconventional for the sake of being unconventional is more often than not about pride rather than mission. However, there are many – perhaps unlimited – opportunities to apply God’s gift of creativity to the great call of bringing Jesus’ healing and restoration to those around us.
• We begin each day with a large white canvas before us. What are my paints and brushes for working on this canvas?

Wisdom

With wisdom are riches and honor, enduring wealth and prosperity.  My fruit is better than fine gold; what I yield surpasses choice silver.  I walk in the way of righteousness, along the paths of justice, bestowing wealth on those who love me and making their treasuries full.
— Proverbs 8:18-21

A Prayer

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.  There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.  Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.  In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.  It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat.
— Psalm 19:1-6

Solomon West works in the private equity industry.

My favorite response came from Omnicom Media Group’s Colin Gottlieb:

I’m not trying to be clever but when you asked how people keep up with the changing digital world, it seems to me you then expected us to list stimuli, but didn’t raise the question of creativity. For me creativity is the ability to successfully connect one abstract thing with another to create something extraordinary. The ability to make these connections depends on many things but perhaps the most obvious is the desire (not the discipline) to observe the world around you. You see stuff, you like it and you store it for the moment the penny drops. The stimuli is not one thing or another — it is everything around you and everywhere you go. Executives in our business have the opportunity to ‘touch’ tons of stuff. They are paid to then make the connections. So, the answer to your question is attitude. You either have the hunger to make the connections or you don’t.”

Now that’s worldview formation – an attitude of open-eyed curiosity that is always looking for connections, always seeking to understand, always making meaning – and it’s a key difference between thought leaders and everyone else.

• Even if you believe you don’t have time to read more, watch more or listen more, does that mean you don’t have time to be alert for connections in what you are reading, watching and hearing?
• Are you confident you’re reading the most useful things, watching the most stimulating and illuminating content, hearing from and conversing with the most challenging voices?

At the risk of prying this passage from its context, look at the way Eugene Peterson renders the words of Jesus in Luke 11:33-35:

“No one lights a lamp, then hides it in a drawer. It’s put on a lamp stand so those entering the room have light to see where they’re going. Your eye is a lamp, lighting up your whole body. If you live wide-eyed in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. Keep your eyes open, your lamp burning, so you don’t get musty and murky. Keep your life as well-lighted as your best-lighted room.”
— Luke 11:33-35 The Message Bible

• Consider a vacation for your mind. Forego the familiar for a few days to visit mental places you haven’t been before. Revisit places you haven’t gone for ages. Read or listen or talk to someone you need a translator (literally or figuratively) to understand. Look around until you encounter something that causes you to live wide-eyed in wonder and belief and fills your body with light.