Just Like You.

Being an only child, Madison has learned how to entertain herself by telling stories to herself as she acts them out. Usually her narratives involve a mother and daughter, teacher and student, etc. She’s learned how to be a good mommy and teacher – but she gets pretty bossy at times.

The other day I walked by her room and heard her tell her imaginary daughter, Honey, I need to finish my work and then I’ll play with you. To which the imaginary daughter replied, But mom, I really want to play now. Mommy Madison said, I can’t play with you right now, I have to finish my work. At this point I walked in the room and asked her, Madison who did you learn that from – then I braced for the answer. She said, Mommy and you – I want to be just like you guys. Yikes!

My mind raced – How can I use this as a teachable moment for her, but the lesson had already been taught. While Sarah and I spend an enormous amount of time with Madison and we love every minute of it, she often craves our undivided attention – play time.

What if God only gave us His undivided attention when He didn’t have anything more important to do?

Flat on the Floor

Recently, we moved from Florida to Tennessee. When we moved out of our home in Florida and into our home in Tennessee many people were involved in helping load and unload the truck. (I am amazed that it only takes a quarter of the time to unload a moving truck as it does to load it.)

If you’re like me, whenever you move you wonder how many furniture or décor casualties there are going to be. Although we were very fortunate to have minimal damage, one of our casualties was an aging bedside table. A few days ago, as we were unpacking, I reattached the legs to the table and everything looked good – no apparent problems. Yet when I turned the table over to stand it up it wobbled for a few seconds and collapsed. The legs and brackets no longer supported the table. I eventually had to throw the table away.

This situation reminded of concept that Tom Messer shared with me a few years ago – He observed that there are four legs to the “Leadership Stool” - Accountability, Instruction, Relationships, and Example. All four “legs” are essential for the stool to be effective. A deficiency in any of the “legs” will render the stool not just ineffective, but useless.

Have you ever sat on a stool that has a missing or broken leg? If so, you probably ended up like my table – flat on the floor. Many of us have likely experienced a similar fate in our leadership experience –When our accountability, instruction, relationships, or example are lacking, our ability to influence or lead is largely diminished. Consequently, to be most effective we must regularly give adequate attention to each of these four areas.

Vision and Grapes

We’ve all done it – stood in the aisle at the grocery store examining, squeezing, flicking…attempting to determine which fruit has the best chance at the longest shelf life. A few days ago I opened the refrigerator and saw a huge bowl of grapes sitting on the top shelf. They were there because Madison and Sarah particularly enjoy eating green, seedless grapes. I like them too – yet, after they’ve been there for a week or so, I don’t particularly enjoy the scavenger hunt that is required to sift through rotting grapes to find the last few edible ones. Occasionally, I get one in my mouth that looked ok, but tastes rotten!

In his book about pursuing God, Wild Goose Chase, Mark Batterson observed that when fruit is no longer ripening it’s rotting – if it’s not growing, it’s dying. Our vision is like that – vision that is not being developed and being fleshed out in our decisions and actions, is dying. There is no middle ground, no status quo in the vision life.

Let’s determine today to live a life of vision that is continually growing and is evidenced in our everyday decisions and actions! Isn’t that cool? You can learn something from a grape.