Good morning on this still dark, rainy Saturday morning. I awoke this morning with much on my mind and in my heart. I guess the best analogy for me in seeking to understand what my brain is so jammed with is the hour glass in watching the gravity pulled sand drop ever downward signifying for me the reality of time in its onward march. This week has been a week of many highs and a few lows which is true for most of us.
As my semester is now completed but for the final exams next week, I feel both release and sadness knowing I will not see many of these 160 students ever again. We have come a journey together and on that journey I have seen yet gain growth, maturity, learning and cohesion become an impregnable force in the learning process. I have seen teams learn to work together even when some of the members may or may not like each other but have seen yet again that team-based performance will always yield better, richer performance results. I have also been reminded all over again that the 80/20 rule is real, tangible and always at play for in any population, you will have 80% that will not create issues, get the work done and excel while that remaining 20% will create the issues and more importantly, will cause the leader to have to devote 80% of his or her time that should be devoted to improving the 80% performance instead spending 80% of the leader's time dealing with the issues created by the 20%. That is why determining, surfacing and eliminating the 20% of an organization is the greatest opportunity for an effective leader. I believe this in my heart as to my students as they have worked through a semester journey.
I must admit that the decision to take a semester off from teaching in the Spring has a bitter sweetness for me. I am really mentally very tired and know I need to time away to recharge and decompress; I know that. But the reality of not touching dozens of lives via my Jim, Inc teaching process that I know produces phenomenal results for the lives and minds of my students leaves me feeling like a hole is in my belly. I also, and most importantly, realize this is God's work I do and thus if my teaching should close permanently, He will find new doors of ministry for me to focus on. So it is all in God's Hands, of course. It is actually exciting to wait and see what God will open for me to do and it could be a broadened role in jail ministry or perhaps music or perhaps a trapeze artist or, wait, I am losing my mind! Smile.
Here is what I know: I love my life even when the disappointments come; and they do. I know when the evil hand of sin touches my family or my extended family in my students, I know my heart aches to pray that person through the dire straits and just this week this has been tested powerfully in my student family. To be an instrument that is fueled by my God is simply humbling and exhilarating when the effects of the evil are brought to submission before a Loving God.
This will be a busy weekend of preparation for the Christmas musical and drama production next weekend at my church. I highly recommend you trying to attend one of these for you will be blessed. Basketball games with my grand kids, a full day of events at church, etc, etc; God is so good.
I cannot close without mentioning an affirmation of God's presence and place in our lives. This week has been a set of unusual issues for Alicia and I both that have triggered a degree of stress and emotion. I detest those times. On Thursday the mail brought a very nice card from our church, the Canton Baptist Temple, and that card was telling us that the staff, which signed the card, had prayed for us on Tuesday during their staff meeting. The staff could in no way have known what we were having to work through but that expression of love meant so very much to us both. Lesson Learned: each of us can find ways to lift and encourage others with almost no effort. Everyone of us need that touch of encouragement. I am challenging each of you to commit in this coming week to deciding five people for you to reach out to to be an encouragement. Guess who will be most encouraged? That would be you!
Please know that as the sands of the hourglass continue to measure off the march of time, the joy of knowing that my life is being used for God's purpose on my life is the most amazing experience of this life journey. I still fail. I still falter. I still get frustrated and disappointed. But being in God's Will is, well, powerful and pays such rich dividend for my family, my friends and my life. This week, please, be a blessing for there are so many people hurting in so many ways many of which you have no idea about. This week has shown me that if five different cases.
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