I was picking up grandchildren after school and one of them hurt a brother, so, being the babysitter, I enforced their mother’s rule and took away the day’s allowance from the offending party. He didn’t like it but accepted it.
Discipline is not meant to be liked, it is meant to change.
Read More rebuke, discipline, friendsI needed to pick up my son in Indiana but an early December storm of great magnitude had settled on Ontario. After checking weather maps carefully I believed I could drive into Michigan, and so with some trepidation I set out west on the 401.
Read More attention, warnings, stubbornnessIf you were in charge of a bank loan department would you loan money to someone to start a restaurant? There is a belief that 90% of restaurant start-ups fail, but apparently this is an urban myth for a study conducted by Cornell University demonstrated that in fact only 26.16% of restaurant start-ups fail in the first year.
Read More trust, wisdom, foolish people, cautionCurrent studies in both management and leadership highlight the critical role of developing good relations with those around us. The Wise Man speaks of core areas of life that demand the continued development and cultivation of good relations, namely relations with people very near us.
Read More blessing, thoughtfulness, consideration
A major automobile company reached the pinnacle of success, more cars being sold worldwide than any other manufacturer, and then suddenly a catastrophe. What happened? They cheated. Smart, but not wise, people in the company figured out a way for the car to register compliance with government exhaust emission standards when in fact the car was not in compliance.
Read More integrity, loyalty, testingThe old saying: “if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” works with a number of assumptions that float just below the surface of its cheeky tone – that being smart should result in wealth, and that poor people are therefore by definition not smart. While neither assumption is necessarily true, these ideas shape many of our attitudes toward wealth.
Read More wisdom, wealth, integrity, shrewdnessAs I write it is raining. Rain is so beautiful as it falls, so musical as it strikes the roof, and life giving, that is, as long as it arrives in a Goldilocks kind of way, not too much, not too little, but just right. Just a drizzle and the ground is only dampened, but a driving rain can wash away the little seeds leaving no crop and perhaps no topsoil so necessary for fertility.
Read More authority, leadership, discernmentIs there a connection between what I know and how I behave, between learning and doing? Some have claimed that there is no connection, that a person may know moral behavior but not live morally, and that there is no necessary link between knowing and doing.
The Wise Man of Proverbs disagrees.
Read More justice, knowledge, understanding, wickedRead Reflect Newton’s third law of motion is “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” a fact so commonly experienced in the physical world that it is easy to think that it also an experience in the spiritual world. For example, if I take from the poor in some manner I will […]
Read More example, judgment, discernmentRead Reflect The rising generation known as “millennials” is very attuned to and concerned about power – power as it is exercised in gender relations, in religion and perhaps most of all, the dynamic relationship of power and money. These who began adulthood somewhere around the turn of the century are aware that as they […]
Read More authority, power, righteousness, money