Saying Thank You

Do you think we could change the world if hundreds, thousands of us started to say thank you more often?

Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, had a personal philosophy that she taught her sales reps. She sent out three handwritten thank you notes every night before bed.

Not only did this allow her to express gratitude to the people she met and did business with, but it helped her to maintain a positive attitude all day long as she sought out people to say thank you to.

Oprah Winfrey talks about keeping a gratitude journal, where you write down five things you're grateful for every day. What if, instead of writing them in a journal, you sent them in a card. That would improve not only your life, but also the lives of the people who receive them.

Too hard, you say? You don't have enough time to write three handwritten cards a day? How about just two? Heck, how about just one? And what if there was a way you could send out one handwritten note in five minutes? Would you do it? What difference do you think it would make in your life?

Can you find one person a day to thank? How about the waitress who served you lunch? Or your neighbor for shoveling your walk? How about your spouse for taking out the trash or washing the dishes or cooking a fine meal or just for being your spouse? What about your child or your sister or your pastor or your teacher? What about thanking the person who made the biggest difference in your life?

Lately I've been having fun thanking people I don't know personally. A pastor/writer whose resources I'm using right now. The hosts of a radio show. Someone whose website I benefited from. And some people I don't know all that well, like the new activities director at my mom's assisted living facility.

My next project is to thank people whom I don't particularly like right now. It will do me good to think about something I can thank them for. And then I want to thank the people who have made a profound impact on my life.

Who would you like to thank?

Loving the Questions

Do you have questions about God? About the Bible? Do you sometimes struggle with concepts such as sin and hell? Do you wonder at times how you’re supposed to live as a Christian? Do you wish you could sit down with Jesus for an hour one evening and ask all the questions you have?

You’re not alone. Jacob wrestled all night with a man (an angel? God himself?) and afterward the man said to Jacob, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Jacob physically wrestled with the man, but it’s a great image for the way we sometimes struggle mentally and emotionally with God.

The whole book of Job is about Job asking why bad things happened to him. Job did have a sit down with God, and God’s answer? “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?” In other words, there are some things we just won’t know because we’re not God.

Paul said, “For we know only in part…now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.”

If we’re not going to know everything fully here on earth, what’s the point of asking? Well, the point is the asking. The struggle, the questioning, the seeking is the point. Rainer Maria Rilke said in his Letters to a Young Poet:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves...do not seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

In January, I’m going to preach a sermon series on the Questions of the Faith, questions about sin and hell and salvation. I do it with fear and trembling, first of all because people often expect pastors to have all the answers, and I don’t. I’ve been waiting for years to preach a sermon on heaven and hell, because I’m waiting until I have it all figured out. I don’t yet. So I’m not going to give you the answers, we’re going to live the questions together.

And the second reason I do this with fear and trembling is because many people think they have to agree with their pastor about everything. And you won’t. I can guarantee it. You might think that because I’ve studied theology and the Bible for three years in seminary, I should have all the answers. But if you read many of the Biblical commentaries, you’ll realize that very educated and wise people often reach different conclusions.

So I invite you to join me on the journey of asking our difficult faith questions, and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us all. What are your biggest questions of faith?

Quotecard

Mondays

My friend Mark wrote on Facebook, "I like Mondays. TGIM!"

I agree. I love Mondays.

I know for Christians, Sunday is supposed to be the beginning of the week. It's not for me. It's the end. The culmination. The crescendo of my week.

Monday is the beginning.

I know many pastors take Monday off. It makes sense. After an exhausting day, it helps to have a day of rest. And since most of the time I'm not fully prepared for worship until right before it happens (and sometimes after it happens), you'd think I'd prefer my sabbath to be the day I'm not thinking about what's ahead.

But I love working on Mondays. Of course, I start slowly. I wake up when my body tells me to. I drink coffee and read in bed for a while. Then I straighten the house (it's usually a mess from the weekend). And I go through the piles on my desk.

And I start thinking about the week to come. The scripture and the sermon. They hymns and prayers for worship. Sunday school. Pastoral care visits and meetings and nursing home services. I can think and dream and plan and brainstorm.

One of my favorite characters, Anne Shirley, from Anne of Green Gables, says, "Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"

That's how I see Mondays:  a new week, fresh and clean and full of possibilities, with no mistakes in it yet.

Christmas Values

I’ve been thinking about Christmas lately. Our church's Advent Planning Team just met. I found the perfect quote for my Christmas cards (from our Sunday school curriculum!). And I’ve started to think about gifts.

So I’ve pulled out my favorite book about Christmas, Unplug the Christmas Machine, by Jo Robinson & Jean Coppock Staeheli. They talk about rethinking how we celebrate Christmas, taking some of the stress and materialism out and putting love and joy back in.

The authors have gone around the country doing workshops. In the workshops, they ask people to imagine what their perfect Christmas would be like.

What would the celebration be like if [you] could throw out all [your] old ideas and habits and start anew with only [your] personal tastes and preferences to take into account. The only requirement is that [you] imagine the Christmas that makes [you] feel most fulfilled.

I did the exercise a few years ago. I imagined being in a log cabin in the woods, with snow falling outside and a fire crackling inside, being with a few close family members, and enjoying a relaxing Christmas. What would your perfect Christmas look like?

Another exercise is to read through ten value statements. Cross off the ones that don’t mean anything to you. Add others that are important to you that aren’t included. Then rank the remaining items.

• Christmas is a time to be a peacemaker, within my family and the world at large.
• Christmas is a time to enjoy being with my immediate family.
• Christmas is a time to create a beautiful home environment.
• Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of Christ.
• Christmas is a time to exchange gifts with my family and friends.
• Christmas is a time for parties, entertaining, and visits with friends.
• Christmas is a time to help those who are less fortunate.
• Christmas is a time to strengthen bonds with my relatives.
• Christmas is a time to strengthen my church community.
• Christmas is a time to be relaxed and renewed.

What are your top values for Christmas? There are no right or wrong answers. There are only the right answers for you.

I pray that this Christmas will be all that you want it to be.

Staying in Touch

Several years ago I did a funeral for a woman who had died of breast cancer. It made me really sad. Not because she died of breast cancer, or because she was so young (in her 40s), although that was tragic.

She was very good at staying in touch with her friends, even a friend from kindergarten. At her funeral, all those friends and family members gathered to honor her and support one another. What made me sad is that I am not very good at staying in touch with people.

How many people have I lost track of because I didn't write?

My elementary school friend Barb. She doesn't live very far from me. We connected again after years of not seeing one another, but I've let that slip away once again.

My college friends Kara and Zoe, and Andrew and Marjorie, Julia and Todd. Luckily Facebook has helped me re-connect with them.

My friend Sirkka, from Finland. She was my best friend when I spent my junior year abroad in Athens, Greece.

My birth mom. I'm adopted, and I met my birth mom for the first time eight years ago. But I don't write very often.

My friend Victoria, from Malawi, Africa. After her husband died, I even bought a sympathy card. But it never got mailed.

I always wanted to be better at staying in touch with people. Facebook has helped. But I've also found another way to stay in touch. Now I can send out a paper greeting card in about five minutes.

I'm hoping this will help me stay connected to the people who matter to me. Who knows? Perhaps I'll even start sending out Christmas cards every year!

The WOW Factor

Ah, stewardship season. My favorite time of the year. Not most people's because we've been taught that stewardship is about guilt and deprivation. It's not. It's about extravagance and generosity.

In last Sunday's sermon I talked about the fulfillment curve, a concept from the book Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. I also wanted to talk about the WOW factor, from The Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyzcyn, but I didn't have time. So I'll share it with you.

Amy and her husband Jim had six children. They also had a goal of buying an old farm house on Jim's salary while Amy stayed home with the kids. They learned some excellent money-saving strategies, hence Amy's Tightwad Gazette newsletter, which is now a book (actually three of them). One principal they practiced with their kids was the WOW factor.

Amy often bought her kid's clothes at garage sales. One year she asked her daughter Jamie if she needed new boots. She didn't. But later on the in the season she wanted green L.L. Bean style boots like her classmates. Before hitting the stores, they went to their church's thrift shop. Miracle upon miracle, she found the exact boots she wanted, only they were plum colored instead of green. Amy bought them anyway, and then at home talked to her daughter about them.

"These boots are almost exactly what you want. Do you think we should spend $25 to buy new boots for you?"

"Mmmmoooommm! I didn't say 'new,' I said 'green'!"

"Okay, plum-colored boots cost .25 cents and green boots cost $25. Are green boots a hundred times better than plum-colored ones?"

She admitted they weren't and quite contentedly wore the plum-colored boots for the rest of the winter.

That would never work with my child, you say. Perhaps not, but maybe because we haven't learned how to use that principal with ourselves. When we go to buy something, we can ask ourselves will the more expensive version give us that much more satisfaction?

Say you were deciding between a $500 camping trip and a $5000 cruise. The camping trip, on a scale of 1 to 10, would be a five. So that's $100/wow. The cruise would be a 10, which is $500/wow. Would you enjoy the cruise five times more than the camping trip? And what if you spent that $4500 you didn't spend on the cruise on other things that had a higher wow factor? You might end up with 40, 50, or more wows for the same 10 wows you spent on the cruise.

Stewardship is about using the resources that God has given us to the best of our ability. One way I do that is to give each purchase the wow test.