I heard recently about a guy named Bob. Bob was single and lived with his father. Bob worked in the family business, a very successful family business.
When it became apparent that his father would not live much longer, and that he would soon inherit quite a fortune, Bob decided to find a wife with whom to share his soon-to-be abundant wealth.
One evening, at an investment meeting, Bob spotted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her natural beauty took his breath away.
“I may look like just an ordinary guy,” he said to her, “but in just a few years, my father will die and I will inherit $200 million.”
Impressed, the woman asked for his business card. Three days later, this beautiful woman became Bob’s stepmother. (1)
There’s a woman who had a plan for success. Everybody needs a plan in today’s fast changing world though marrying a wealthy widower may not work for everybody. But the world is changing and we need to be prepared.
Dan Miller, in his book No More Dreaded Mondays, tells about many of the changes that are taking place in the American workplace. He enumerates the many jobs being lost because of technology or as the result of foreign competition. You already know this, but still it is jarring when you are confronted with the harsh reality of it all. Did you realize as you pick up your cash at your bank’s ATM that these convenient devices are doing the work of 179,000 former bank tellers? It makes life easier for the rest of us, but those are nice people losing their jobs.
Even with the continuing problems of the U. S. Postal Service, did you know that sight-recognition machines have replaced 47,000 postal workers? That’s startling, but it is a phenomenon faced by an increasing number of workers.
As for foreign competition, did you realize that many apparel workers and financial analysts have been coerced into training their foreign counterparts who will work for a fraction of the hourly wage expected in America? (2)
The world is changing. None of us can count on lifetime security from a job any more. So we better be prepared. Experts tell us that a person between ages eighteen and forty-four will have an average of 10.8 different jobs over the period of his or her lifetime. Many people are losing well paying jobs and having to settle for careers in lower paying situations. Some counselors are telling us that today’s workers, particularly younger workers, need to think like entrepreneurs. We need to take responsibility for our own careers and not leave that to our employer.
Making a living has always required diligence. Jesus knew what it took to succeed in the world. We forget that for about half of his life he was a carpenter. There are some scholars who think he might have been quite successful at his work perhaps on the order of a contractor or an architect rather than simply a hired worker.
Today’s story from Luke’s Gospel reflects Jesus’ business background. There were many who were starting to follow him. Did they know what they were getting into? Unbridled enthusiasm has its place, but it must be tempered with reason. So Jesus uses an analogy. “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’”
Jesus then moved to another analogy. “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.”
Jesus was stating a solid spiritual principle in practical and recognizable terms. People fail in business. People also fail in life. And the reasons are often the same.
One guy said sadly, “I started out on the theory that the world had an opening for me. I was right. Today I’m in a hole.”
We know what he was talking about, don’t we? For the person who does not sit down and count the costs whether building a tower or conducting a military campaign or building a life can find himself or herself deep in a hole.
Successful living begins with a plan. It is amazing how many people fail to plan. The old saying is true: people who fail to plan, plan to fail.
I was reading about an Englishman named Lionel Burleigh. In the 1960s Burleigh decided to become a newspaper man. He was unhappy with the depth of reporting in British newspapers at the time, so he decided to publish his own paper. He called his paper the Commonwealth Sentinel.
Burleigh worked diligently for weeks writing articles, promoting the newspaper on billboards, selling advertising space, and printing up 50,000 copies. He was determined to make the first edition a success.
On February 6, 1965 after the newspaper had left the printers, an exhausted Lionel Burleigh was resting in his hotel room when he was interrupted by a call from the London police. “Have you anything to do with the Commonwealth Sentinel?” the officer asked. “There are 50,000 of these newspapers on the outside entrance to Brown’s Hotel and they’re blocking Albemarle Street.”
With the hundreds of details to attend to when publishing a newspaper, Burleigh had overlooked one critical detail: He never got a distributor. Nobody was out delivering his newspapers. They were sitting in the middle of the street blocking traffic. The Commonwealth Sentinel folded the following day. (3)
Poor foolish Lionel Burleigh. He was probably a fine man. He may have even been a smart man in many ways. But his plan was not completely thought out. Like the man who ran out of money building a tower or the king who brought too few soldiers into battle, Lionel simply didn’t take all the necessary contingencies into consideration.
How much time do you spend planning for the future? Some people spend more time planning for a vacation than they do planning for their life. We are so busy with so many things in our lives, we may not even think about the things that really matter. I want to ask you two questions that all of us must answer at sometime or another.
Let’s begin here: what kind of legacy do you hope to leave to those you love and to the world? One of these days you will be leaving this earth. How will people remember you? In what ways will the world be a better place because you’ve been here?
Stephen Covey in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People suggests that we begin with the end in mind. We’ve talked about this before, but, if you were to die tomorrow, what would you leave behind? Which of your values would you want to pass on to your heirs? Are you living out those values right now? When you get to the end of your life, will you do so with a lot of regrets? What will your friends say about you? Your family? Will you have the resources to meet the challenges of your final years, not only financial resources, but emotional resources, relational resources, spiritual resources? Those are big questions. But they must be answered if we are going to have anything close to a successful life.
Author and business guru Peter Drucker says his life was shaped by a teacher who once asked, “What do you want to be remembered for?” Drucker was only 13 when he heard this question, and he really didn’t have an answer.
“I didn’t expect you to be able to respond,” the teacher continued. “But if you still can’t [answer this question] by the time you’re 50, you will have wasted your life.” That was a wise teacher.
Phil Munsey, in his book Legacy Now, notes that there are seventy-eight million baby boomers in America. One of them turns sixty every six seconds, and the youngest are quickly turning fifty. This has created a huge interest among people in that age range in what he calls midlife evaluation. Boomers are feeling that it is time to make a change.
This evaluation, says Munsey, is bringing a transition from “me” to “we” and from “take” to “give.” That’s a healthy transition. By necessity, perhaps, boomers are moving from a “more-is-more” to a “less-is-more” world-view. (4)
German psychologist Erik Erikson called this shift the developmental stage of “Generativity vs. Stagnation.” This is when people become aware of the need to live beyond themselves and begin the difficult task of leading a meaningful and useful life.
Of course, we don’t have to wait until we are a boomer or beyond to adopt this perspective on life. It is the kind of worldview that Jesus encouraged among his followers. What kind of legacy do you hope to leave to those you love and to the world?
In 1962, Clare Boothe Luce, one of the first women to serve in the U.S. Congress, offered some advice to President John F. Kennedy. “A great man,” she told him, “is a sentence.” Abraham Lincoln’s sentence was: “He preserved the union and freed the slaves.” Franklin Roosevelt’s sentence was: “He lifted us out of a Great Depression and helped us win a world war.” Luce feared that Kennedy’s attention was so splintered among different priorities that his sentence risked becoming a muddled paragraph. (5)
As you contemplate your purpose for being, your plan for life, begin with the big question: What’s your sentence?
Former pro football great Bubba Smith came face-to-face with his sentence many years ago, and he didn’t like it. Do you remember Bubba? He first came into prominence at Michigan State University as an All-American defensive end. The first selection of the 1967 NFL Draft, he played nine years in the pros. He was named to two Pro Bowls and was a First-Team All-Pro in 1971.
After football, Smith was recruited to appear in commercials for Miller Lite beer. He and fellow NFL veteran Dick Butkus were cast as inept golfers and polo players in the TV spots.
In one of the most memorable ads, Smith recited the virtues of the beer, beaming into the camera, “I also love the easy-opening cans,” while ripping off the top of the can.
But Smith walked away from the job because he didn’t like the effect drinking had on people and he realized that he was contributing to a significant social problem. In a magazine article about his life, Bubba Smith said that neither beer nor any other alcoholic beverage had ever been part of his life. But he advertised Lite beer and felt good about his job. It was an easy job. It was an enjoyable job, it paid a good salary.
Until one day when he went back to Michigan State, his alma mater, as the Grand Marshal of the Homecoming Parade. As he was riding in the limousine at the head of the parade, he heard throngs of people on both sides of the parade route shouting. One side was shouting, “Tastes great!” and the other side was shouting, “Less filling!” the slogans Miller Lite used to promote their products. Bubba Smith suddenly realized that he and the beer commercials that he made had had a tremendous impact on the students at Michigan State.
Later, Bubba was in Ft. Lauderdale during Spring Break, and he saw drunken college kids up and down the beaches, shouting “Tastes great! Less filling!” And when it came time to renew his contract, he refused to sign because he said that he didn’t want his life to count for something like that. He said that there was a still, small voice in his mind that kept saying, “Stop, Bubba. Stop.” Bubba Smith didn’t want the sentence he would leave as his legacy to be “Tastes great! Less filling!” So he walked away. (6)
What sentence will one day summarize your life? “He was a great father.” “She kept a spotless home.” “He had a bad temper.” “She wore the cutest outfits.” How about if that sentence was, “He or she was a genuine disciple of Jesus Christ.”
Jesus was addressing people who were considering becoming his disciples. He wanted them to understand what was involved. He didn’t need half-hearted saints. He wanted people who were willing to leave everything they considered important if that were ever needed in order to follow him. Would you measure up to that standard?
Years ago there was a remarkable village in southeastern France called La Chambon. What made this village remarkable is that the residents of that village, as a community, risked their lives to protect Jews during World War II. In later years documentaries were made about them; a wonderful book titled Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed was written about them by Philip P. Hallie. But the villagers tended to be irritated by questions that made their risks sound noble or praiseworthy. “What else would you do?” they responded. “You do what needs to be done.” (7)
That would be a good one-sentence legacy: They did what needed to be done.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once told a most moving story shortly after the horror of 9/11. It involved a passenger on United Flight 93, which went down in Pennsylvania. That passenger, Tom Burnett, called his wife from the hijacked plane, having realized by then that two other planes had crashed into the World Trade Center.
“I know we’re going to die,” he said. “But some of us are going to do something about it.” And because they did, many other lives were saved.
“I know we’re going to die,” is a wholly unremarkable statement. Each of us here could say the same. But those other words, “Some of us are going to do something about it,” is an inspiring one sentence legacy.
What will be your legacy? What one sentence would you want to define your life? Are you living right now so that that legacy may be achieved? “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? . . . Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.”
What is your plan for your life? Are you living according to that plan today?
1. Fred Miller, MONDAY FODDER, http://family-safe-mail.com/
2. (New York: Broadway Books 2008).
3. Leland Gregory, Stupid History Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness, and Mythconceptions Throughout the Ages (Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, 2007), p. 173.
4. (Charisma House, 2008).
5. Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us (New York: Penguin, 2009).
6. Melvin Newland, http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/love-divine-melvin-newland- sermon-on-christmas-40903.asp.
7. John Ortberg, The Me I Want To Be: Becoming God’s Best Version Of You (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), p. 75.