“There are four quarters in a game, and four quarters in a year. At the end of the year did you walk away having won, or did you just play the game?” Nola Peterson crystalized that thought yesterday at the end of a brief Year End Sprint training session in which I focused our top leadership on “running through the bag” so the year could be completed instead of  just lazily “trotting” the bases until the year was over. It’s an important thought. Are you winning, or just playing.

I think most people engage their work for the sport of it instead of playing to win. It’s a game to get up everyday, suit up, show up on the playing field, drink Columbian Gatorade with friendly teammates, step to the workstation to run a play, drink some more finely ground Columbian Gatorade, have half-time, then go back to the playing field and run a few more plays all the while waiting for the clock to run out. I call this “Playing between the 40’s.”

In football if your team manages to keep the game between the two forty yard lines, nobody wins. The ball moves a few feet one direction or another while players repeatedly grunt, sweat, and pile into a heap. Not much exciting happens, and no points are scored. They don’t give points away for “fine execution between the 40’s.” You are credited with points when you break across the 40 and drive into the opposing team’s end zone.  Trophies don’t go to teams that consistently “deep into the 42 yard line.” Trophies go to teams that break across the goal line and occupy the enemy’s territory.

Notice the use of the word “break.” If you are going to succeed you’ve got to have a break out, away from the rest of the pack. You’ve got to break away from old habits and break-up with negative people who are holding you back.

Why don’t more people experience breakouts? I think its because breaking out involves risk. If I stay huddled with my team between the 40’s, nobody is going to criticize me for showboating and my opponents aren’t going to come crashing into me, making me eat dirt because I broke out. There is camaraderie in the huddle and safety in the group. There is no thrill of victory. There are no awards for accomplishment. There is no forward momentum for greater achievement. But it’s safe. If you’ll just agree to not go beyond the 40, the other team will take it easy on you when they tackle you and make it look like you are really playing the game. If you won’t embarrass them and make them run “all the way” down to the endzone. They won’t face-plant you. But that’s no way to live, knowing neither the sweet taste of victory nor the satisfaction of giving your best amidst defeat.

If you are going to be successful, you’ve got to break out away from the group. You’ve got to take the risk that when you rise above the crowd somebody will take a shot at you. You’ve got to understand that people you thought were your friends will suddenly turn on you because your hard-work, effort, and success make them feel bad about their own life between the 40’s. But life and work are not hobbies played for mere entertainment, we’re here to win. When we win big we advance the ball for our family, our team, and all the people depending on us. And, we give ourselves the respect we deserve. We are worthy of being winners!

As we make the final turn in 2009 and head toward the starting gate for 2010 let’s evaluate our game. Let’s be willing to do the hard work so that in 2010 we can spend more time dancing in the end zone of life.

In speaking about the build up to World War II, General and eventual President Dwight D. Eisenhower said “Rarely have the forces of good and evil been so amassed against one another.” That quote was displayed on the wall in one of the museums. Eisenhower’s clarity caused me think of George Bush. In the aftermath of 911 he spoke clearly about “good and evil” and was castigated for it. It had become politically incorrect to call someone evil. We might hurt their feelings, or incite them to an angry outburst. Seems to me the outburst had already happened and the using the word “evil” was just speaking the truth. Eisenhower said it. He was right. Bush said it. He was right, too.

Evil was behind the Holocaust. Evil was behind 911. Evil caused my fellow classmate Fred Winters to be shot down in the pulpit of his church a few months ago. Evil caused the psychiatrist at Fort Hood to open fire killing 13 people while wounding three dozen this week; and the guy in Florida who opened fire in the office complex this week; and the sexual predator in Ohio in whose home they found 11 dead women; and back home in mid-Missouri where the teenager bludgeoned the nine year old girl to death last week. Evil. It’s the work of Satan. It’s not lack of education, or intellect, or empathy. No, it’s evil. The Bible teaches that Satan is our enemy and that he searches to and fro looking for those whom he may devour. Some get devoured mentally and emotionally; some physically in violence. But its all rooted in Evil.

Ike wasn’t trying to make a statement. He was just calling it like it was. Likewise, regardless of his faults, God Bless George Bush for recognizing Evil and calling it what it was. You and I would do well to examine and know the times, to recognize what’s behind them, and to not hesitate or faint to call Evil by name when we see it.

“Our inability to deal with unpleasantness in life all goes back to the invention of the flush toilet.” That was the thesis of a great book entitled The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch, a Milford, MI funeral director. Lynch notes that in the old days when people died, their family took care of preparing the body at home, and that the unpleasantness of death was buffered by preparing the  loved one’s body for burial. Life included death. 

With the advent of the flush toilet, came a shift in the human psyche, Lynch posits. The flush toilet got rid of life’s unpleasantness with the push of a lever, and thus began the softening of our ability to deal with the many unpleasantries that are part and parcel to the human experience.

People laugh, or look at me weirdly when I tell that story. However, I think Lynch is on to something. I grew up around a funeral home; drawn their by a young lass with whom I was smitten. My first kiss came on the doorstep of a funeral home. Didn’t seem weird to me. She was very much alive! Through the years I occasionally helped to move a body or to deliver the daily dead to another town. I remember when the congressman I’d grown up hearing about as a hometown hero came home in a casket. We opened it and found that when they prepared bodies in Washington D.C. they posed them with their heads turned to face out of the casket. I remember watching as Gary (the funeral director and father of the lass) grabbed the congressman’s head and proceeded to turn his neck until he was facing the direction that dead people were supposed to face in our little town.

I grew up on the farm, and value the lessons I learned there greatly. Death, life, sex, hard-work, economics, it was all there on the farm. It created in me a “rootedness” and a sense of “balance” and understanding of the rhythms of life that I value greatly and am attempting to pass on to my kids through the same farm experiences. But my learning didn’t end on the farm, and it extended past the funeral home. I remember being a Medical Explorer at Cox Hospital when I was 16 years old. Suddenly I was thrust into the delivery room with wailing mommas seeing things I’d never seen before. I remember standing by the bedside of an elderly woman as she took her last breathe. All of these things mixed into the milieu that was my growing up and that have served me well as a pastor, an advisor and counselor, a teacher, a Dad and friend.

So, why do I bring this all up? Unpleasantness, that’s why. In soft America we’ll go far to avoid unpleasantness. We lie and don’t tell the truth to each other because it’s more comfortable to tell the lie than to risk the outburst that the truth might elicit. We tolerate underperformance from our peers and disobedience from our kids because we value faux peace over the clarity and accomplishment that truth and discipline would produce. We don’t fight for truth, because the fight is unpleasant. Case in point: I heard a guy from Minneapolis today on CNN talking about how wars can’t be won, so we shouldn’t fight them because the costs are so high. Hmmm. Let’s think about that a moment. If we used his logic we’d still pay allegiance to the King of England, Obama would likely be a slave instead of the President, and all of Europe would be under control of Hitler’s offspring. Detestable as it is, I think there’s a place and a time for the unpleasantness of war. And confrontation. And moral absolutes.

My house has seven flush toilets. I wouldn’t take for my indoor plumbing. I’m infinitely glad there’s no chamber pot under our bed. But I’m not afraid of unpleasantness. When I know it is lurking, I seek it out so that it can be resolved.

Embrace the unpleasantness. Make the best of it. Learn to deal with it. If you need help, take a look in the toilet. But don’t forget to flush.

One of the most helpful truths my friend Lee Brower has taught me is “Lift the Anchor.” When we face a big, insurmountable project we often fail to tackle it because of it’s size, or that the ‘getting ready’ is its self an enormous task. So the question is: How do you move a battleship? You don’t have to haul the anchor thousands of feet up from the sea floor and safely stow it on deck. All you have to do is lift the anchor an inch off the sea floor and you can move the ship. So the BIG SHIP in your life that you need to move only requires a small task to get started: Lift the anchor!

Lifting the anchor, taking action, take the first step, getting in motion—they are all the same principle. Norman Vincent Peale said “Inaction is both the result of fear and the cause of fear.” When we take action it begins to build our confidence (or restore confidence that has waned.) So get up off the couch, put on your sneakers, and walk the first 100 steps toward the physically fit you. That’s lifting the anchor. Clean just one drawer in your dressor, or one spot on your desk. That’s lifting the anchor. Sweep just one corner of your garage. Anchor’s away!

What BIG challenge do you face today? You can be paralyzed by fear and enormity, or you can take the first step.

Get in motion!

Perry Noble’s website  contains the following items he wished he’d learned earlier in life. They resonnated with me so I reprinted them here.

#1 – Everyone Will Not Understand You…SO Stop Trying To Explain Yourself. Cast Vision…And MOVE Forward!

#2 – Everyone Will Not Like You…So STOP Trying To Be Popular.

#3 – You Don’t Have To Be The Person Who Actually Solves Every Problem….Admit You Are Not The Smartest Person and Let Your Experts Be Your Experts.

#4 – Spend WAY More Time Talking About Who You Are Rather Than Who You Are Not.

#5 – A Leader Is Always An Easy Target Because They Are…A Leader. So, Get Over Yourself And Get On With What God Called You To Do!

#6 – When The Holy Spirit Presses Something Into Your Heart…Don’t Ignore Him.

#7 – Do NOT Expect God’s Next Step To Make Sense.

#8 – You Can’t Plan A Move Of God…But You Must Be Prepared For One!

#9 – Do Not Resist Something Just Because You Do Not Understand It!

#10 – People Who Claim You “Are Not Deep Enough” Are Obsessed With Information But Have No Desire To Live Out Transformation.

#11 – You Don’t Need To Listen To Everybody…But You Had Better Be Listening To Somebody Because God Didn’t Ask You To Take This Journey Alone.

#12 – Never Apologize For Asking People To Commit To Something…Jesus Didn’t!

#13 – The Church Has Been Underachieving For Way Too Long…So Dream BIG And Don’t Apologize For It.

#14 – There Will Be Days When You Want To Quit…Don’t…Jesus Didn’t! (Remember…DON’T GIVE UP…if you are discouraged, take a second and read this!)

#15 – The Gospel Changes Lives…PREACH Every Sermon Like It’s Your Last!!!