“Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others . . .” – 1 Peter 4:10 

It was in December of 1997, approaching the Christmas holidays, when at the suggestion of one of the colleagues on our team we all decided to forego our usual tradition of buying gifts for each other and instead using those collective resources to help a family in our community who was in need.  Within a week or two we had gathered quite a collection of food, clothing, toys, and household goods, enough to fill several vehicles.  Then, late one day after work we caravanned – all of us together – to the home of the family we had identified.

One gentleman on our team dusted off a Santa costume that had long been tucked away in the back of his closet, arriving at the door of our adopted family all dressed up, to the great delight of the several small children in the family.  Two among us happened to be fluent in Spanish bridging the communication gap between us and the non-English speaking family.  Others contributed muscle strength, mechanical and technological skills.  And all of us, without question, opened our hearts in ways we never had before.

Not surprising, we all went home that evening feeling good that we had helped someone.  The surprise came in the difference it made in us as a team.  We may have thought we were a good team before, but nothing like we were afterwards.  As the long-time leader of our business unit, I began to notice how we worked together even better than before.  The constituents we served noticed too how the quality of our service had improved.  Then, remarkably – though this is perhaps a bit of a stretch to link it directly – our business performance literally boomed, not just in the short term, but for all the remaining years we were together.  It was a win-win for everyone, the family in need, the performance of our team, service to our constituents, the profitability to our company, and ultimately our own compensation.  It is also worth noting that in the years to follow adopting needy families became an annual tradition.

It is amazing what happens when we offer our special gifts to the service of others, whether putting on an unused costume, speaking another language, or other strengths and skills. It is exactly what the Apostle Peter was urging his readers. “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace.”

“They will still bear fruit in old age . . .”  – Psalm 92:14

“Old age is not for sissies,” my mother would often say in her later years.  It would seem that remark was made mostly in the context of her declining health, but I think there was a deeper meaning than simply enduring the suffering brought on by health problems.  I also think it meant that in order to live out one’s remaining years effectively and productively requires courage.  And among those I have observed who have “finished well” as the saying goes – including my mother – have indeed been people who exhibited great courage.  That is, they were not faint hearted about expressing love, cherishing friendships past and present, sharing their wisdom, and giving generously of themselves.

In her marvelous book The Gift of Years Sister Joan Chittister says, “The gift of years comes to many more than realize that these later years are gift, not burden.  Not everyone who lives them either understands them or welcomes them. . . This is a special period of life – maybe the most special of them all. . . . Life is not about age, about the length of years we manage to eke out of it.  It is about aging, about living into the values offered in every stage of life.”

We live in an achievement culture, “A culture of people striving and trying to win success,” according to New York Times columnist David Brooks.  He goes on to explain, “The way I express this contrast, this hunger for success is by two sets of virtues, which you could call the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues.  And the résumé virtues are the things you bring to the marketplace which you put on a résumé.  And the eulogy virtues are the things you get expressed in your eulogy. . . So the eulogy virtues are to give courage, to give honor, what kind of relationships do you build, did you love.”

So as my own years increase I find that I too am less burdened by an endless pursuit of success – not that I’ve yet achieved everything I set out to do – but because I am free to live for what really matters, those things described as eulogy virtues.  I’m free to share my wisdom, love my family, enjoy my friends, teach my grandchildren, to leave a meaningful legacy.  It is the gift of years.  And “They will still bear fruit in old age . . .”

“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up. . .”  – 1 Thessalonians 5:11 

Who have been the great encouragers in your life?  When I think about that B.F. Jordon often comes to mind.  He was one of my teachers in middle school (junior high school we called it back then) who eventually got promoted to principle.  Mr. Jordon, as we called him, had this amazing ability in a sort of tough-love, non-judgmental, sometimes humorous way of encouraging every one of his students regardless of academic ability, race, or social status.  Even in early adulthood I would often go back to visit with him, always coming away feeling in some way encouraged.  We all need that, don’t we?

So, if we all need that, who then are you an encourager to?  As a grandfather I quickly learned that my job is not to be another parent, they receive good parenting from the ones they have.  Instead, my job is to encourage, cheerlead, model, and affirm.  This school year one of our granddaughters qualified for an honors program requiring her to get up especially early in the morning, not an easy task for a teenager.  Many mornings I send her a silly text message at 5:45 a.m. to make sure she is up.  It is sort of a prank on my part, but what is not a prank is that it is a way of encouraging her and cheering her on.

Encouragement is a powerful motivator, not only in the formation of young lives, but for everyone at every age to be better, to feel better, and to perform better.  It was in 1994 that Erin Gruwell started her first teaching job as an English teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, a racially mixed school plagued by gangs and violence.  Yet, as told in the 2007 movie Freedom Writers Erin was able to transform her classroom and the lives of her individual students by encouraging them to write down the tragic stories of their lives and subsequently share those stories with each other.  Over time these diverse classmates were transformed from bitter enemies to intimate friends, most of them successfully completing high school, and many going on to college.

Far from being plagued by gangs and violence, my small-town school could hardly be compared to Woodrow Wilson High School in 1994.  But, B.F. Jordan and Erin Gruwell had much in common, both being encouragers.  If only, I pray, I am half the encourager with my grandchildren as those two teachers demonstrated; for encouragement is a powerful motivator. “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up.”

“. . . to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”  – Mark 12:33 

Are you a to-do list person?  I am, and not because I am organized, but in fact because I am not.  Without my to-do lists it is too easy for me to conveniently forget all those mundane tasks I would rather not deal with such as paying bills, keeping the cars maintained and filled with gas, filing reports, or setting up appointments, all those necessary details that keep business and life from running off the rails.

While as much as I may not enjoy dealing with details, on those days when I do tackle the to-do list items it gives me a great sense of accomplishment knowing that all that mundane busy-ness has protected my business and my life from running off the rails.  Yet, there is a world of difference between activity and progress in that to-do activities are critical in supporting our missions, but they do not necessarily advance them.

It has been suggested that we must work on our business, as well as work in our business, which is to remind us not to get so bogged down in the day-to-day tasks that we lose sight of our mission and purpose.  Recently I have participated in no less than three board retreats with different organizations for the purpose of strategic planning.  The very reason such events are called “retreats,” typically at off-site locations, is to break away from the daily grind of to-do tasks in order to focus on the advancement of the mission.

In his book How the Best Get Better: The Art and Science of Entrepreneurial Success, Dan Sullivan suggests we should designate certain days as “focus days” dedicated to critical activities, that is our to-do lists.  Equally important are “buffer days” that are free from “to-do’s” dedicated instead to the progress of our mission.  When Jesus says, “. . . to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices,” he seems to be reminding us that to love God and our neighbor is our primary mission.  He does not say that offerings and sacrifices are unimportant, rather that they are not the mission.  Instead, they are the to-do’s such as regular prayer, worship, and giving, critical in supporting the mission; for without these to-do’s the mission is at risk of running off the rails.  Yet, without the mission the to-do’s don’t really matter, do they?

“You intend to harm me, but God intended it for good . . .”  – Genesis 50:20 

Those of us who remember the late Dizzy Gillespie, one of the greatest jazz musician and trumpeters of the twentieth century, also recall he had two distinctive characteristics, one being the way he puffed out his cheeks like two inflated balloons when he was playing his horn.  The other, and my favorite, was the oddly shaped trumpet he played with its 45-degree up-tilted bell.  It was not until I came across an article about him that I learned the origin of his bent trumpet.  “A bandmate fell on his horn,” according to the article, “bending it, and Gillespie found that he liked the sound projection.  From then on, each of his trumpets was custom-made with an up-tilted bell.”

When I read about that, the first thing to cross my mind was how furious I would have been with that clumsy musician, had it been me, for damaging the instrument of my livelihood, accident or not.  Apparently not so with Dizzy Gillespie, who instead discovered a whole new unique sound from the bent trumpet, which eventually became his trademark.  Then it occurred to me, isn’t that the nature of jazz as a musical artform?  For unlike rote musical scores intended to be performed exactly as written, jazz is improvisational, being modified, or even made up as it is played.  So, where a wrong note or missed beat in a written score is considered a blunder in traditional music, a jazz musician might turn it into a whole new sound – exactly the way Dizzy Gillespie reacted to his bent horn.

So, from that perspective it made me think about God, imagining how He must be the consummate jazz musician, improvising as we humans clumsily blunder through life, bending creation and one another into all sorts of misshaped forms, sometimes accidentally and other times intentionally.  Yet, regardless how bad we bend things out of shape, God finds ways to improvise and redeem our blunders, to transform wrong notes and missed beats into new sounds, damaged instruments into distinctive trademarks.  Look, for example, at the redemptive work of Alcoholics Anonymous, based on the concept of one addict helping another addict find sobriety.  Such are the “grace notes” God includes in the music of life.