Front Load or Top Load?

By: Dennis Bates

Front load or top load: that is the question of  my day. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it. Still, as my wife is quick to point out, that’s the way life is.

I learned Friday that washing machines are supposed to remain dry outside as they clean the clothes inside. It is not a good thing when water pools around the outside edges at the base of your machine. It is even worse when the pool of water takes almost as many towels to sop up as the machine just washed.

When I say I learned, I mean my wife told me all this, so it has to be true. As a guy, I figured as long as I had one or two dry towels left, I was okay. I can stretch two towels for several weeks, even a month if I’m careful. My wife is more demanding. Several days with the same towel is her absolute limit. I’m thinking, as long as it’s dry when I use it, what’s the difference?

All of that to say that today we have to shop for a new washing machine. It’s a complete waste of time as far as I’m concerned, but if  I have to so do this to maintain domestic tranquility around the home front, okay. I guess.

Now we come to the top load verses front load decision. Would that it were that simple. You can’t stop there. There are high energy machines, some with spin cycles, some with small hand wash cycles, some rinse only, cotton only, permanent press, and some  for delicate fabrics. For the record, none of the things that I wear are delicate, or require special treatment. At least you guys know what I’m saying here.

Like almost everything else these days, there are far too many options. Back in the day when I was in college and did all my own laundry, it was simple. The white cotton clothes got washed together on “Hot.” Everything else got thrown together and washed on “Cool” or “Cold.” And, oh yeah, nothing got washed at all until it was mature enough to walk to the laundry on its own.

Hey, it worked.

You women married us didn’t you? So don’t wrinkle up your noses. 

I don’t know why it needs to be any more complicated today, but for some reason it just does. Some people (mostly engineers and techie types) have made careers out of taking the simple and the obvious and making them complex and mysterious. It doesn’t have to be that way, and that is from a retired lawyer. Nobody can obfuscate better than we can. Well, almost nobody. I forgot about theologians.

In the Old Testament God said to the Hebrews, “You are my chosen people; here are Ten Commandments; follow them.” They didn’t. Eventually, the elaborate set of rules and laws that their religious leaders developed became so confusing that nobody understood them, but that was great for the religious leaders because they had a full time job explaining them.

In the New Testament, God tries to clear things up for us. He sends His Son Jesus to tell us we’re making things too hard. All we have to do is “believe in him and love one another.” Period. Beginning and end of the story. We didn’t. Instead, we got more rules, more interpretations and more leaders ready to take advantage of the confusion they helped create.

A washing machine cleans our clothes; God cleans our souls. It doesn’t really take multiple cycles or constant reinvention for either of those things. It just takes us. We have to listen and do what we’re told. Nothing more.

My Final Answer

By: Dennis Bates

I have to come clean. Sometimes I have a little trouble making decisions. Well, maybe it’s more than a little, but maybe trouble isn’t the right word. Maybe difficulty would be better. No, it’s not difficulty exactly; maybe I’m just a perfectionist at times. Come to think of it, maybe I don’t have trouble at all. Perhaps I just need to think things through completely before I move forward. No, I have trouble and that’s my final answer. Or is it?

An example: I’ve been working off and on writing a manuscript for more than three years now. First it was one story, then two. I meshed them together to make one again. Then I wrote two more. I wove those into the first two, that was really one now, and the four, or three, depending upon how you are counting, became one again.

I can’t tell you how many versions of each story I’ve written. For one thing, part of me doesn’t want to think about it. On the other hand, most of me can’t remember all of them. Somewhere I have pieces of all of them in computer land, but just remembering where I kept all the pieces would be a daunting task.

I can almost hear my cohort, Staci ,screaming in the background, “Put it away; do something else; come back to it later when you have all the pieces.” That’s probably good advice, but it’s advice I can’t take. Or at least I can’t follow it. I’m just not built that way. Too linear I guess. I can’t get to the finish line until I go through all the points between here and there.  Otherwise, I just can’t get there from here.

In some ways I wish it were different. It is incredibly frustrating to see the finish line from where you’re standing, but at the same time realize you aren’t there yet, and you have a lot of things to do before you get there. It almost makes you want to give up and not go any farther. But, see, for me at least, I can’t do that either. It’s sort of like the third law of thermo nuclear dynamics: You can’t win, you can’t tie, and you can’t get out of the game. I’m not certain I understand that totally, but I can feel its fright and its frustration.

The worst thing I could do at this point is quit, no matter how tired my WIP is making me. (That’s writer speak for Work In Progress, by the way. Everyone who claims to be a writer has to work that into a conversation on a regular basis.) I can’t and won’t get out of the game. Writing that story and others is the reason I am here. I am totally convinced of that. And it’s the reason I’ll keep my eye on the prize and keep moving forward.

I would like to be able to say, as Paul did, that I have fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith. I’m not there yet, but some day I know I will be. That’s one thing I know for sure and it is definitely my final answer.

I Was Wrong

By: Dennis Bates

Dave Letterman is just the most recent example of one of the most significant problems facing our society today. His announcement that he was the subject of an alleged blackmail plot and his admission on national television that he had affairs in the past with several staff members are big news, and the details that will no doubt come out in the following days promise to make that news even bigger.

There are some who say his unveiling lends credibility to the old maxim that what goes around comes around. As a comedian who makes a living using his acerbic wit to poke fun at the foibles or other prominent people, he is now getting a dose of his own medicine. Perhaps. Others say, as one of his recent guests did, that his actions  just prove he’s human. Duh! What else would he be?

All the rationalizations trying to lend him cover notwithstanding, what bothers me more than anything about this is the way he’s treating it, and the way his buddies and audiences are responding to it. Of course, there has been ample precedent for this type of reaction, and it doesn’t matter whether you approach things from the right or the left. There are less than shining examples on both sides, whether the person is a former President or a former evangelist. They just prove that a lot of the public is nonpartisan in its myopia.

Here’s what I mean. Mixed in between Letterman’s comments that have been generously described as an apology from him to his wife are the usual Letterman quips. Even though their barbs are self directed for the most part, they have the effect of trivializing and  attempting to excuse his conduct.  To say that “…when a person hurts someone, they have to fix it…” is a far cry from an apology. To add “I have a lot of work to do” is similarly no apology at all. At best it merits an equally flippant response such as “Do you think?”

Letterman appears to be trying to deflect any personal wrong doing or responsibility here when his comments are taken in total. The fact that he has a national television show to beat his breast lightly and whisper “mea culpa” doesn’t impress me much.

Furthermore, the willingness of his supporters and audiences to accept that kind of modern day non confession is even more appalling. It reflects in a small but significant way the total lack of morality that eats at the very soul of our society today. Everything is relative; nothing is wrong, especially until you get caught.

Let me suggest something radical to Letterman and all of us who continually fall short of perfection. I’ll even provide the words. They won’t serve as a spring board for jokes or clever quips nearly as well as some, but then, they are supposed to do that. They don’t need to be recited on national television either, even if doing that helps the ratings.

Here they are:

What I did is wrong. I did it; nobody else, and I was wrong. Please forgive me. I will try to do better in the future because I will try to do what is right.

It’s as simple as that. If you want the advanced course, you might try that from your knees and direct it heavenward after you tell the person   you wronged. I’m not saying that Letterman hasn’t done that; I don’t know, and I don’t need to. At least he didn’t try to cover up what he did; why not go the whole way and admit that what he did was wrong, simply and directly? Then, and only then can he get the forgiveness he needs.

Let God Be God, Part II

By:  Staci Stallings

As I’ve thought about this concept this week, I realize this has been one of the keys of my newfound peace.  For many years, I was “wound tight” as a friend of mine said.  The reason I was “wound tight” was because it was all about me… my plans, my goals, my effort, my ability.  If it failed, it was my fault.  If it didn’t turn out the way I had planned, I had failed.  I failed a lot–though I worked very hard doing it.

Since I’ve learned to let go, I’ve also learned (slowly and not perfectly) to let God be God.

That manifests in many ways.  For example, if I get interrupted by a phone call from a friend, rather than being “wound tight” about what I’m not getting done on my schedule, I let God be God and relax into the fact that He had something else in mind for that particular moment.  As I’ve done this, I see how perfectly He sets things up.  Like the other day.  I had to stay after Mass to sell raffle tickets, the problem was it was nearly an hour of waiting until the next Mass was out.  At first, I fretted because I hadn’t brought my computer or anything to do.  What was I going to do with that whole hour with nothing to do?

I hadn’t even gotten sat down when a woman approached whom I know but not well.  She asked me a question.  I answered, and before I knew it, we were having this conversation about letting other people be where they are instead of demanding they be where we think they should be (huh, that sounds kind of familiar though I didn’t even know the let God be God phrase then).  We talked for a LONG time.  I was marveling at how perfectly God had set up that appointment when she moved on with her life.  I was still marveling when another woman who I know but not well came and sat down beside me.  She asked me a question.  I answered, and before I knew it, we were talking about bipolar and how devestating it is.  We also talked for a LONG time, and it seemed so right though I would never have thought to plan that conversation.

About the time she got up to leave, Mass let out.

Now I don’t know about you, but I think that God had both of those two appointments all set up for me.  I also think I could have been so wrapped up in my plans, my goals, my effort, that I could have either completely missed both opportunities or I could have resented them all while they were happening.

Letting God be God is like taking your hands off the wheel, admitting you don’t know everything, and letting God show you what you most need to know and do at any given moment.  The more I let God be God in my life, the more perfectly things work out.  Like with this raffle (actually, it was two raffles for different schools–don’t ask, sometimes I think the Holy Spirit is crazy!).  I didn’t want to manage one raffle much less both.  In fact, I had been running from doing the raffle for eight years.  Both caught up with me this year.  I didn’t think I had time to do one much less both, but it was odd (cool!) how things worked out.

First, the second raffle didn’t take shape right away so I was able to get my feet on the ground with the other for about two weeks.  When the second kicked in, I focused on the one I was working on at the time–rather than worrying about both and everything else.  I did THIS, this step.  Take this step and let God worry about what came next.

In the course of two weeks, I ran both raffles, finished one with a big night, helped my oldest when she got her tooth pulled under anesthetic (scary stuff!).  We did volleyball, hands on science, two violin lessons, gymnastics, and homework.  I made signs for one raffle, went to a meeting, worked with my family while my dad had a major health issue, had two birthday parties for my son, AND stayed sane.

How?  Because I let God be God.  He worked out the parties.  He gave me time to do the invitations.  He helped me make the signs and get to school.  He helped (A LOT!) counting money and organizing tickets.  He sent me the right help at the right time in the right place–more than once.  And somehow, He made it all fun!

That’s what letting God be God will get you.  You can stop being “wound tight” and just relax.  Life is so much better this way.  I ought to know.  I tried it the other way, and I can tell you this… this way is a WHOLE LOT MORE FUN!

Don’t Look

By: Dennis Bates

Annual pay raises for federal employees, when I still got such things,  used to show up on the first pay check for the first full pay period of the new fiscal year. That wasn’t the first of the year, as in January. The federal government employees new year started sometime after September 1, and that’s about as specific as I can get.

Never an employer to do anything that would be normal by most employer standards, those who decide such things have determined that federal employees get  paid through an elaborate, almost logarithmic formula.

The amount for a two-week paycheck is calculated roughly as follows: annual salaries for the different pay grades are set; they are divided by 2087, which is the number of hours in a federal government year. Never mind the fact that every other business has determined that there are 2080 hours in a work year. (52 weeks times 40 hours a week.) The hourly number is then multiplied by 80, which is the number of hours in a two-week pay period, and that’s the employee’s gross pay.

Logic would tell a person of normal intelligence that the government is having its own way twice with this system. The hourly rate is effectively lowered by dividing annual pay by 2087, but the employee is paid by multiplying that number by 80. (Guess what: 80 times 26 pay periods in a year is 2080.)

The government is not content to stop at this point. Tax rates change, life insurance payments change and health insurance changes, none at the same time of the year. Therefore, the federal employee’s pay check is constantly adjusted and readjusted to reflect those changes until everything settles out sometime in February.

Just think of how much money could be saved if the government programmed its computers to make all the changes just once. Of course, that would mean that the programmers would have to be changed too, and the fiscal minds that actually run our government might find that to be too mundane. After all the government thrives on continual chaos, so where would the sport in that be? Look how well our current system has worked. Oh, wait a minute…we are having  this temporary down turn, deficit thing, aren’t we.

The creative lunacy of the pay system has different effects on different employees, all of whom are taxpayers themselves, I might add. I used to work with one woman who refused to look at the information that told her how much her “raise” was. (They weren’t always raises, just in case you wondered.)  Her reasoning was that that government always cheated us and no matter how much the pay adjustment ended up being, it was always $50 a week less than she needed.

As the diatribe above reflects, there’s some small truth in her position, even if it’s very small.

The whole process always made me think about the passage from Matthew 6:19. Jesus told the multitude on the hillside not to bother itself with storing treasures on earth because moth and rust ultimately consumed those treasures.

Instead, Jesus told the crowd to store its treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust could touch them. Perhaps Federal fiscal policies, including those that set federal employee pay should be added to moth and rust as destructive agents, or, maybe my coworker had the right idea after all. Don’t be so concerned about money and other treasures you can store up on earth. You can’t store enough here anyway.

Greath Truths

By: Dennis Bates

If you’re like me, one of the more interesting facets of the Internet is the endless string of emails you receive from friends and relatives who mean well, but really ought to think seriously about getting a life. You know:  the jokes, the websites to videos that are the “funniest thing I have ever seen,” and the always popular chain letters that promise wealth and happiness within 10 minutes of sending the letter on to your ten best friends.

Think about that one for a minute. Do you think they will still be your best friends if you keep filling their inboxes with chain letters? And, if those chain letters really do bring health and wealth, why do the same people keep sending them? If they really worked, wouldn’t those people be on some private island somewhere enjoying their health and spending their wealth?

Let me be crystal clear about this; with the exception of an occasional joke or two, I NEVER pass those things on. Read that as not at all, even if I find some inspirational value in them. I have too few friends as it is. I don’t need to irritate those I have left. It’s an arbitrary rule I have made up that acts as my own personalized spam filter, and it applies to both outgoing and incoming emails. Trust me. It’s better this way for both of us.

Still…and you had to know something like this was coming…occasionally I get something that is just too good to keep entirely to myself, especially when I can add my own cute little comments to it. Forgive me if you have already received this list, but I have pared it down some and added my own observations.

The list is called “Great Truths” and it is broken down into age groups.

Great Truths Little Children Have Learned.

–When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don’t let her brush your hair.  My daughters taught me that one early when I asked them why they screamed so much when their mother fixed their hair as they were growing up.

–Never ask your three-year-old brother to hold a tomato for you. Those of you who don’t get that one never had a younger brother or had to clean the tomato off the walls after you unwisely asked him to hold it for you.

–You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk. I know about this one personally. I tried it. My mother found the broccoli I was supposed to eat immediately. I still had to eat it, and, trust me, the left over green milk isn’t all that good to drink.

Great Truths Adults Have Learned.

–Wrinkles don’t hurt. I should add, if you don’t look in the mirror.

–Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber in it, not for the free toy in it. I miss those toys. They were much more fun to play with than fiber is.

Great Truths Older People Have Learned

–Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional. Kind of self explanatory. I’m still considering my options.

–When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you’re down there. After all, if you’re like me, it’s going to be a while before you find a way to get back up. There’s no sense in wasting all that time. Oh yeah, those communication things you can wear are for wimps!

–Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone. Have you ever noticed that at one instant you can have these profound insights that seem so wise and then the next minute…wait, what was I talking about again?

Have a great week full of great truths, no matter what stage you’re in!

Let God Be God

By:  Staci Stallings

The reading from the Old Testament this weekend featured Moses and his 72 elect who received the Holy Spirit.  The only problem was two of those elect leaders were back at camp.  When the others who were with Moses found out these two had also received the Holy Spirit, as you can probably imagine, there was trouble.  “They weren’t where they were supposed to be.  They weren’t with us.  They weren’t here.  How could God do that if they weren’t here?  Doesn’t He know they weren’t here?  Doesn’t He care that they weren’t following Moses to be where they were supposed to be?”

Funny how we, like the Israelites, are so quick to judge.  We are so quick to see why someone got something we think they shouldn’t have, and we rail against God for giving them something we don’t think they deserve.

However, over and over again in the Bible, man’s ways are pushed aside for God’s ways.  Like in the vineyard when the Master pays everyone the same amount although some worked a full day and others only part of a day.  We are told in essence, “It’s God’s money, He can do with it as He chooses.”  Or better yet, “It’s God’s Grace, He can do with it as He chooses.”

The rest of the homily was good, but the line this weekend that smacked me upside the head was simply this:  “Let God be God.”  If He chooses to pour His Spirit out on someone you don’t think is worthy, let God be God.  He doesn’t have to bow to your standards.  He doesn’t have to give a test or make anyone earn anything.  It’s HIS Spirit.  He can give it as He sees fit.  The incredibly simple fact is:  you don’t KNOW why someone else wasn’t there.  Maybe the two leaders were tending to a sick or dying man and couldn’t make the meeting.  Maybe they were detained by a God-Appointment of some other kind.  God’s saying, “You don’t know everything so quit acting like you do.”

But oh, do we fight against this!  “It’s not fair.”  “I didn’t even get a thank you, and look what they got.”  “Did you hear that such-and-such got that promotion.  They didn’t deserve that…”

As true as that sad fact of our arguing is, we fight even harder when it’s about spiritual matters.  “Look at how she’s dressed.  She doesn’t need to be coming to church like that.”  “How much did they give?  I bet it wasn’t as much as us.”  “Why did she get chosen to lead that committee?  She’s only been in the church for six months.”  “They want to baptize that baby?  Well, they only come to church once in a blue moon.”

Oh, we can be so petty metting out God’s Grace on others.  Petty.  Petty. Petty.  A dribble here.  A drop there… as if it’s even ours to give.

The truth is we are the ones who think they should have to earn it.  God never said that.  God gives His Grace and His Spirit freely… as HE chooses.  And it’s a good thing He does because honestly, sometimes I’m the one back at camp.  I know I should have gone to the meeting on the mountain, but for some reason, I didn’t (and maybe the reason I didn’t had everything to do with me being exactly where I really WAS supposed to be in God’s Plan!).  The truth is, we’ve all been the ones back at camp at one time or another.  This is not about being those 70.  It’s about being one of those two!

It’s not bad news that God is free to give His Spirit to anyone He chooses.  It’s good news because it means He can give it to us!

Let God be God.  Let Him bless who He wishes to bless, and you bless them too.  (This gets MUCH easier when you finally realize how very generous our God is–and when you finally realize just how generous He’s been with you!)  Be HAPPY that God is a generous God even with those who don’t deserve it.  That’s GREAT news when you think about it!

We are all sinners and have all fallen short of the glory of God.  That means none of us deserves it.

Thank God He doesn’t hold that against us!  So why are we so intent on holding it against others?

Let God be God!

Of Violins and Suffering

By:  Staci Stallings

Sunday turned out kind of strange.  The Holy Spirit had me go to Mass twice.  Now this is very unusual, but that’s how it happened.  By the end of the homily I knew why.

The beginning of the homily was great… note to self, start taking notes!  But then end knocked it out of the park.

Midway through the priest left the podium and came down in the midst of the parishoners.  He told about an old violin maker.  The violin maker was known for the beauty of the music his instruments produced.  So violin making students came to him to learn.  At the beginning of the process, the violin maker would take a paint brush into the forest and mark trees.  “Yes, this one.  No that one.  Yes.  Yes. Yes.  No.”  Then he would instruct the woodcutters to bring him the trees he had marked.

One step at a time the students learned to hone the instruments and glue them so that their music was exquisite.

Then a new student came to the school.  This student was stubborn.  He believed he knew more than the old violin maker, and no one could tell him differently.  Worse, he complained about every lesson–that they were too hard, that making violins that way just took too much time.  Everyone was annoyed with this student, and they wanted him thrown out of the program.  The old violin maker decided to give it one more try.  He took the student with him to the forest and began marking trees.  “Yes, this one.  No that one.  This one, this one, this one, not those three.”  When he had marked several trees, the violin maker turned to the student and handed him the paint bucket.  “You.  Mark the trees.”

The student was confused.  “But I do not understand.  I don’t know why you mark some trees but not others.”

“Were you not watching?”

“Yes,” the young man said.  “I was watching, but I do not know why you mark some trees and not others.”

“Look.”  The old violin maker pointed to the top of the trees.  “The trees I have marked are those that are facing north.  They lean north.  They do not shirk from suffering and difficulty.  They meet the rain and the hail and the wind head-on.  A tree that has faced adversity grows strong.  It’s wood is the finest anywhere, and ultimately, it will make the very best music anywhere as well.”

Do you face suffering or do you bend the other direction away from it?  How’s the music of your life?

I think I know why the Holy Spirit sent me to church twice… I needed both sermons!

The Rat Race

By: Dennis Bates

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you are still a rat.

Several people have been given credit for that statement; among them is comedian Lily Tomlin and an Ivy League professor in the Fifties. I suggest something very similar to that was suggested in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, but I’ll get to that a few paragraphs down.

The term rat race refers to the daily grind most of us go through getting up every morning, going to work at the same job, doing a lot of the same things, and coming home at the same time to the same house and the same set of duties there. Who hasn’t wondered at least once what the point of all that is? I have. Call it the rat race, call it a rut, call it burn out: it doesn’t matter.

Thinking of life in those terms has the same soul killing effect. Laboratory rats in a maze. Nothing more. Scientists may be able to train the rats to find their way through the labyrinth faster and faster, but in the end the rat ends up in the same place every time and the reward is the same morsel of self gratification in the form of a food pellet.

At the end of the day, even the fastest rat is still a rat. It has no hope, no variety, no joy, no future. Its training is like the training for some runners Paul describes In 1 Corinthians 9: 24-27. It is designed to teach the rat how to get the prize, but it is an aimless beating of the air because the prize it seeks is a crown that will not last.

Paul has nothing against training or running. In fact, he says we should train strictly and run in a way to get the prize. He just suggests that many of us might have the wrong goal and be running for the wrong prize. Paul’s prize is a crown that will last forever. Eternal Life.

But I think Paul is talking about more than the ultimate goal in this analogy. I think he is also talking about the process of getting to that goal. He says he trains not only to set an example for others, but also so he himself can win the race and win the eternal crown.

That process should change us. It should make us see that God looks at our motives and intentions, not just the results of our activities. What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his own soul? The process should make us concentrate on improving our motives so that our results mean something.

Jesus spoke time and time again about the need to change our hearts first. He said hatred in our hearts for our brothers is no better than murder. Lust is the same thing as adultery. The person with the most wealth in the world still dies at some point, and if he or she dies without Christ, the worldly wealthy person dies penniless. Their wealth does them no good.

No matter how well we do something, or how fast we get at finding our way through the maze we call the rat race, if we only run that race to get the food pellet at the end, we miss the point. We may be the best, but we are still a rat; the best rat maybe, but a rat. Nothing more.

Life is so much more than learning how to become the fastest rat in the cage. Don’t settle for that. Don’t make it your goal. It doesn’t last.

Swish

By: Dennis Bates

I gave up playing basketball on an organized team fairly young. For one thing, I grew rapidly to five feet eight inches and then stopped. For good I might add. That’s still my height today, and even in the Sixties that just wasn’t tall enough to play basketball competitively.

I also shot in streaks, sometimes hitting six or more shots in a row, only to miss the next twenty in a row. Not a good thing for the most part.

But one incident convinced me to try a different sport more than any other, and I can still remember it almost fifty years later. It’s strange the things that stick with you sometimes.

I took a tip off in a junior high school game and raced the length of the floor before laying the ball in perfectly to score. Swish, nothing but net.

 The crowd went wild and I was so proud…until I realized that  in all my excitement, I had streaked to the wrong end of the floor and made two points for the opposing team. Talk about looking for the trap door so I could disappear. Of course, there was none, and even though my teammates tried to console me, I never got over that wrong way basket.

The fact that I made a perfect layup didn’t matter since it was for the wrong team. What mattered more was the fact that I went the wrong direction. And even though I looked good making the basket, I still felt the embarrassment of that moment.

To some degree, that’s what happens to all of us when we lose focus. It should have occurred to me that something was wrong when  no defender jumped in front of me to block my path. I should have stopped to gather my wits when the floor opened up so clearly. But all I could think about was scoring and looking good personally. I was just a kid. Looking good then was important.

What’s the excuse we use now that we’re not kids anymore? Why is looking good so important even if it means going the wrong direction to look that way?

How much time do you have? The list is no doubt endless, but to some degree it comes back to the same thing. We lose focus and are easily misdirected. We forget that to be first we must be last, or we just don’t care about that principle anymore.

It’s a shame really because there is no sound any more satisfying to a basketball player than the sound of the ball cleanly ripping through the bottom of the net. However, as sweet as that swishing sound is, the results are still less than satisfying if it’s the wrong net.

Life is the same way. You have to keep your eye on the prize so you don’t get misdirected.