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“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”

• Ecclesiastes 3:1 

Whew!  What a relief getting a reprieve from the scorching temperatures of the Texas summer, that relentless perpetual heat wave that seems to have no end in sight.  Not that hot summers are unusual in Texas; they are simply part of where we live.  In my lifetime, rarely have there been summers of mild temperatures and higher than normal rainfall.

If I appear to be whining about the summer heat it is because I am.  Just wait a couple of months, though, and you’ll catch me whining about having to rake the fall leaves in my yard week after week.  And by February I will be sick to death of cold weather.  Then around mid-May I’ll be complaining about my spring allergies.  Whine!  Whine!  Whine!

But here is the flip side.  I love beautiful fall days, crisp mornings, autumn colors, pumpkin flavored coffee, and football games.  It is one of my favorite seasons.  I also love cold winter days sitting by the fire reading a book, watching sports on TV, preparing for the Christmas holidays.  And I love springtime when the weather begins to warm, the days grow longer, and the outdoors begins to green up and blossom.  Then, amazingly, I even look forward to summertime once again, long days to spend outdoors, knocking around in Bermuda shorts and my favorite Keen’s sandals, cooking on the grill, eating on the patio, having picnics, or attending outdoor concerts.

Interesting, isn’t it, the push and pull of seasonal changes, how we soon grow weary and bored from day-after-day long hot days?  That’s the push.  But the anticipation of fall, crisp mornings, milder days, and early sunsets, that’s the pull.  Sometimes I think God must have created the annual seasons – winter, spring, summer, and fall – to prepare us for the seasonal changes of life – childhood to adolescence to young adulthood to middle, then old age.  There, too, we experience the push and pull of transitioning from one season to the next. . . Except, it has been the last one that has surprised me the most, even though at the top of my game having grown weary of those hard-charging middle years – the push – yet anticipating new work to do, a higher calling, accepting a more humble position within my family and community – that is the pull.  It is so true, isn’t it?  “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”

“The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.”  – Proverbs 20:5 

In his newest book Resilient John Eldredge tells a story about several friends sitting on his deck one night “talking about this and that,” as he describes it, “when a woman we all know came up in the conversation.  She’s the kind of person who seems to have an internal steadiness.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen her thrown by anything.  She might seem at first to be quiet and withdrawn, but that’s only because she doesn’t need to assert herself into the center of things.  When she speaks, it seems to come from a deep resource.  There was a moment of silence, and then someone said, ‘She’s a deep well.’”

What struck me about that story when I read it was not the uniqueness of it but its familiarity.  Don’t we all know someone like that who seems to have it all together – grounded, rock-solid, quietly confident, “a deep well” as the woman was described?  But then Eldredge added a punch line, a profound truth that applies to all of us.  “Actually,” he wrote, “every human being is a deep well.  They just don’t draw upon those places within themselves because they live near the surface of their own existence.”

We have a mantra within my profession of executive coaching about the people we work with, our clients, that everyone is “creative, resourceful, and whole.”  Everyone, in other words, is a deep well, except most of us fail to recognize that depth because we tend to live too near the surface.  As coaches we challenge our clients to draw from those deeper parts of the well where answers and solutions and enlightenments dwell, as often does a greater sense of purpose.  Evoking awareness, we call it in our professional training, the calling up or summoning of what is already there, down deep.  That’s what we do.

To be clear, none of us will find all answers, solutions, or knowledge no matter how deep into the well we dive.  Indeed, we always need others to shore up our shortcomings because we all have them.  What we will discover from down deep, however, is an awareness of more capacity and capability than we realized.  For every human being is a deep well, but we must dive beneath the surface in order to draw upon it.  “The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out,” says the Proverb.

“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life . . . so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders . . .”  – 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 

In one of my early Abundant Living essays years ago I wrote about a man who was my seventh-grade history teacher and principal of the junior high school I attended.  “B.F. Jordan was one of those special teachers,” I wrote, “who touched my life with his wisdom, wit, character, and passion for teaching.  He never had a student, to the best of my knowledge, in whom he did not see great potential.  Well into young adulthood he remained my counselor, advisor, and friend – until his sudden and untimely death.”

I went on to describe him as a person who “never had aspirations for glory, victory, fame and fortune that I could ever tell.  He seemed quite content with who he was – pretty much unknown beyond the city limits of our small community.  Why is it, then, that I remember him, but I can’t remember the winner of [say] the 1963 World Series?  Could it be the quiet way he touched the lives of the many young people he taught?”  This past summer I had an opportunity to hear B.F. Jordan’s son, Lindy, give a reflection about his dad.  One of the stories he told referenced his father’s work ethic, and how in the summer months when school was out of session he would hire out to roof houses – in scorching West Texas heat no less – to supplement his modest income as an educator.  Not that I was surprised by that story, it just added another layer of respect for a man I so admired.

It’s the quiet ones we have to watch out for, we’ve often heard it said.  Sometimes that is meant as a warning, of course, but most often it is to call attention that the one we least expect, the one in the back of the room or the end of the line, the most modest, most humble who winds up being the one with the most influence, being the most impactful.

In these days of the internet glaring in our eyes and television blaring in our ears, how easily our attention is drawn away from the quiet ones – the B.F Jordans in our lives, our colleagues, our caring friends and neighbors, bosses, teachers, coaches, parents, children, and relatives, not to mention our own influence as quiet ones among those within our circles.  “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life . . . so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders . . .”  Want to change the world?  Turn your attention toward the quiet ones.  Be one yourself.  That’s who makes the world a better place, always has.

“Bad company corrupts good character.”  – 1 Corinthians 15:33 

A wise philosopher once said, “If you hang out with bad people, bad things are going to happen, but if you hang out with good people, good things are going to happen.”  I had the privilege of being acquainted with that wise philosopher a number of years ago.  His name was Robert, and Robert knew what he was talking about; for once upon a time, as he would be quick to admit, he had started hanging out with some bad people which led to a life of drug addiction, petty crime, and living on the streets.  Thankfully, though, Robert eventually met and began hanging out with some good people who helped him turn his life around into a one of sobriety, honest work, a roof over his head, and most importantly friends he could depend on to be a positive influence.

Many of us perhaps can identify with Robert’s story in that we have had some experience hanging out with both good and bad people.  I recall being in fifth grade when this new kid moved into our block.  I started hanging around him and thought he was one cool guy because, being two or three years older, he knew all sorts of “worldly” things I had never been exposed to.  My parents never said anything about my friendship with him, but being the good parents they were, maintained a watchful eye on the situation.  Soon, though, I realized that guy was not leading me down a good path.  And how did I know that?  Because up until then I had always hung out with good people, the same crowd to which I quickly returned.  Fortunately, that whole episode was short-lived, but it exposed me first-hand to what that wise philosopher Robert would put into words years later.

I don’t recall that neighbor kid ever asking or forcing me to do anything I shouldn’t have done.  It was just that hanging around him sort of rubbed off.  What ultimately kept me away from the trouble I could have gotten into is that hanging out with good people had rubbed off even more.  Isn’t that the way it seems to work, though, that our character develops not so much from what we are told or taught, but what simply rubs off?

“Bad company corrupts good character,” the Apostle Paul warned, just as that neighborhood kid almost did with me.  But that wise philosopher Robert would also testify that good company can have the opposite impact, transforming bad character into good.  What an awesome responsibility, that our own character rubs off on someone else!

“Now choose life . . .”  – Deuteronomy 30:19 

In his newly purchased sporty little car, my wife’s grandfather, Cecil Dye, set out on a rural highway for a test drive – or more to the point – to see how fast it would go; that is, until he topped a hill at just about max speed where a highway patrol car sat just waiting for him.  After receiving his speeding ticket Cecil looked up at the cop and asked in a smirky tone, “which direction are you headed from here?”  When the cop pointed in one direction Cecil nodded in the other, “then I’m going that way.”  It was Cecil’s clever way of getting the last lick in, or thinking he did at least, but I doubt it; for I have always pictured that cop walking back to his patrol car shaking his head with a big grin on his face, knowing full well Cecil was not done testing out his new sporty car.

Celebrating our fifty-first wedding anniversary over weekend reminded me of the many unexpected (and undeserved) bonuses that had come with the package of getting to spend my life with the love of my life.  Among them was Tee’s grandfather Cecil Dye who for twenty-five years was like a grandfather to me, filling a void I had felt in my life from the loss of my own grandfathers when I was a young child.

Cecil could hardly be described as the stereotypical rocking-chair-type grandfather; rather, he was the kind of grandfather who would buy a hot sporty car and take it out on a rural highway for a test spin at top speed, fearless of any cops who might be hiding over the top of a hill.  Notwithstanding such devilishness, he was anything but an outlaw, in fact quite to the contrary.  Cecil Dye was one of the most upright, moral, honest men I have ever known, smart, hard-working, and dedicated to family and community.  Though not a particularly religious man, at least not in a churchy kind of way, his best fishing buddy, who happened to be a local minister, insisted he had a deeper faith than his own.

Over our years together Cecil taught me many things, but most notably was his contagious zest for life like few people I have ever met.  I would like to think a little of that rubbed off, not just on me but on our whole family.  “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live,” he would likely advise if he could speak to us today, for that is what he did.  He chose life, even as he passed on to the next one, at age ninety-five.