Week 14: Celebrate Your Life

 I'm finding it difficult to distill all the wisdom from the various sources in this course into one blog post.  

One of the major principles that were driven home is that money is simply a tool.  It is never to be seen as the end goal, but a tool to help you accomplish the things that you want most with efficiency.  If you have not taken the time to develop your true character, goals, and guideposts, then money will simply serve as a vehicle to self-destruction quicker and more directly.  If, on the other hand, you have a set mission statement with larger life-goals and a central stabilizing purpose, then money again, will serve as an efficient gateway to those goals.  Though I had earned this knowledge through life experience, it was valuable to have seen it first hand, and to hear it over and over from men and women who had made a lot of money and could say with all honesty that it didn't solve all of their problems or bring them true happiness, by itself.  For that, they needed something more.  

That "something more" to me is the sense that one has a larger and irreplaceable role to play in God's larger story.  It is learning that the day to day frustrations and monetary gains and losses are the "small story", while working for the good of God's other sons and daughters on Earth, building trustworthy and strong emotional ties to our families, and continually working with God to improve our flaws and to draw closer to Him, are the "larger stories".  

My view on our calling in life has stayed much the same.  I still believe that we all have the same basic calling if we are Christians; that we are to give all we can to the elimination of suffering, proclaiming of Christ's grace, and to bring as many of His sons and daughters to that belief as will listen and are looking.  Beyond that, I don't know that it makes much of a difference whether we lead publicly traded companies, or whether we teach the third grade in a small elementary school.  Both roles can make a difference in the lives that come into contact with the person in these roles.  In fact, I still believe that almost any career can be magnified to the point that it makes a positive difference in the world, however small.  What is essential, and can't be ignored, is the character of the person in the role, and whether he or she will improve their corner of the world for the glorification of their Father in Heaven.  

I feel a little foolish giving words of advice, direction, caution to others, when I have not walked the path of entrepreneurship and experienced first-hand the pitfalls and temptations.  However, I can offer the advice from knowledge I've gained in this class.  My first bit of advice would be to establish your bottom line guiderails - those things that you will never do.  If a wrong action can be justified once, then it will become justified many times, and grow into larger infractions of honesty.  Hold to those guideposts.  Second, find a passion!  Your passion may not ever pay, but it will enrich your life in many ways and give joy, refreshment and spice to life's sometimes mundane and dark valleys.  The smartest, most persevering, and luckiest of us will figure out a way to make a living from that passion, but it may not be your path.  Simply providing for a family, even if it's with a job that doesn't make you come alive, is an act of heroism.  Don't discount that.  My third piece of advice goes with the second about passion.  Care enough about that passion to get on the path of mastery.  Don't just mess around with it, but have the humility to become a true student, and it will open up to you avenues of joy, enrichment, learning, brain power, and self-knowledge.  Fourth, and above all, do whatever it takes to stay close to God.  He is the stabilizing center, the course-corrector, the great guide, mentor, comfort, and source of wisdom and strength.  With Him as our guide, we cannot fail.