I hope and trust this post finds you all having a great day as a glorious new day begins to dawn in my Sweet Home Alabama! I am so excited for this day! It is going to be a great one!
In a post titled One Degree Off Course, which can be found at uncommoninfluence.com, the writer shared the following:
"I have a friend named Larry who is a retired Air Force Pilot. One day he shared with me an interesting fact about flying. He said that, for every single degree you fly off course, you will miss your target landing spot by 92 feet for every mile you fly.
That amounts to about one mile off target for every sixty miles flown.
If you decided to start at the equator and fly around the earth, one degree off would land you almost 500 miles off target."
Here is the chorus to the song Slow Fade by Casting Crowns:
"It's a slow fade when you give yourself away
It's a slow fade when black and white have turned to gray
Thoughts invade, choices are made, a price will be paid
When you give yourself away
People never crumble in a day
It's a slow fade, it's a slow fade"
Earlier this week someone at my work did a really great job. When I was sharing it with our leadership team I suddenly realized that we hadn't talked about something like this in a long time. A year ago we were very intentionally looking for the good things others were doing and celebrating it. Heck, we even put a plan in place to make sure everyone knew about the great thing someone else had done. And yet, when I was talking about this one person, it struck me that we had not talked about things like that in a long time. Sure, we tell folks when they do a great job, we make sure they are valued and appreciated however we were no longer looking for the little bits of good that each one of us do every day. We are 1 degree off course, we are slowing fading...
I honestly don't know what happened. Could be the pandemic, could be the civil unrest, could be the political...whatever you want to call it! The bottom line is, we were no longer intentionally looking for the little bits of good that each and every one of us does every day.
In a post about Andrew Carnegie that can be found at bible.org that was published on February 2, 2009, the writer wrote:
"A reporter asked Carnegie how he had hired forty-three millionaires. Carnegie responded that those men had not been millionaires when they started working for him but had become millionaires as a result.
The reporter's next question was, "How did you develop these men to become so valuable to you that you have paid them this much money?" Carnegie replied that men are developed the same way gold is mined. When gold is mined, several tons of dirt must be moved to get an ounce of gold; but one doesn't go into the mine looking for dirt - one goes in looking for gold.
That's exactly the way we pastors need to view our people. Don't look for the flaws, warts, and blemishes. Look for the gold, not the dirt; the good, not the bad. Look for the positive aspects of life. Like everything else, the more good qualities we look for in our people, the more good qualities we are going to find."
Beautiful and brilliant, isn't it? We spend so much time looking at and for the dirt, we don't even attempt to find the gold. Let's be different, Friends. Let's look for the gold in everyone. It is there! Just like mining for actual gold, we may have to move tons of dirt to find it but it is there. Please, I implore each and every one of us, let's make a commitment this day, right here and right now, let's look for the gold in each and every person we are blessed to have in our lives and to cross paths with today!
Finally, I want to share a quote that speaks to my heart:
"Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Please don't hesitate to contact me if there is ever anything I can do for you or your family. I will always help you any way I can. You can reach me at kevin@whatwillyourinfluencebe.com.
Have a great day, a wonderful weekend, please cherish your precious families, and please stay well.
Kev
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