Tuesday, September 2, 2014

What good did I do?

I read this morning on a story about how famous folks end their day this anecdote: In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin outlined a schedule that would lead him to "moral perfection." In this ideal schedule, Franklin asked himself the same self-improvement question every night: "What good have I done today?"

What a wonderful idea, minus the ideal being for self-improvement. What good have we done today?

If, and it's a mighty big if, if we were able to truly ask ourselves this and not counting having done good being what serves us best but what serves others best, what a different world we would live in.

See, I truly believe the answer to all our problems lies in just one of Jesus' many, many teachings. If we love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and strength and AND our neighbor as ourselves, then and only then will we have that different world.

The most exciting thing about starting a church is watching it grow, and by grow I don't necessarily mean numbers. I mean grow in helping, grow in caring, grow in all the reasons a church exists in the first place.

Lately I've been somewhat obsessed with the gaining and the spending of monies. We are trying our best to rebuild, restructure, repair a building and a church, and that -- unfortunately -- takes money. I'm heading up a team that is trying to raise capital to help do that very thing. Every day there is a new idea, a new item, a new suggestion, a new way to go about doing that.

I spent $80 on a meal last night at my grandson's birthday "party." There are places in this world that could eat off that for a month, if they had that much.

Through all that, I wonder. Have I done good today? Have I made a difference in the world in which I live so that someone could see?

I fear the answer more often than not is no, I have not. And I wonder if it might be possible to begin to change that?

What would the world look like if we all asked ourselves the same thing?

Tonight, as you lay in bed reading, ask yourself seriously, "did I do good today?" Then tomorrow morning, ask yourself perhaps the greater question, "What good can I do today?"

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