What are you gonna be?

When you get to heaven God is not going to ask you why you weren’t more like Mother Teresa, Billy Graham or Bono.  He’s likely to ask you why you weren’t more like you.  Your responsibility and source of real freedom and success is to discover who you are. Lead with your own unique talents and personality. Be authentically you and let God use you.

Remember the classic movie,  Forrest Gump.  At one part, Jenny asks, “What are you gonna be when you grow up?” and Forrest says, “Why can’t I be me?”

Theologian Frederick Buechner once told a graduating class:  “The voice we should listen to most as we choose a vocation is the voice that we might think we should listen to least, and that is the voice of our own gladness.  What can we do that makes us the gladdest, what can we do that leaves us with the strongest sense of sailing true north…?  Is it making things with our hands out of wood or stone or paint or canvas?”  Or is it making something we hope like truth out of words”  Or is it making people laugh or weep in a way that cleanses their spirit?  I believe that if it is a thing that makes us truly glad, then it is a good thing and it is our thing and it is the calling voice that we were made to answer with our lives.”

Can you trust what makes you “glad?”  Could that really be the voice of your “calling?”

“A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him….  The more a tree is like itself, the more it is like Him….” – Thomas Merton

Dan’s Diner

It’s big news in this community that Nissan has finally moved 1500 employees into their new headquarters here in Franklin, TN.  And then the Nashville Tennessean had an article last Sunday stating that there are 150 places to have lunch within a one mile radius of the new Nissan building. 150 places to eat lunch!

Why would someone open number 150, knowing there are already 149 others doing the same thing?  Is it really that difficult to come up with a unique business idea?  In my yard we have a tree that has two faces carved into it – creating a permanent piece of art instead of a problematic stump.  Every Friday our massage therapist comes to our house – saving us the time of driving to her office.  Last night at a seminar presentation a young guy showed me writing pens he makes using wood from old benches from the Grand Ole Opry.  Country music fans buy them faster than he can turn them out. 

My advice is don’t just pick a business that has 149 competitors, industry margins of 3-4 percent and then give coupons for 15% off.  I have to believe there are better options than that.  And no, trust me, you aren’t going to see Dan’s Diner anytime soon!