Anchored
“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”
David, Psalm 19
Happy Friday,
We must think about what we think about when we’re not thinking about what we think about. Why? Because those thoughts – i.e., the background narrative of our life – significantly shape us. David knew this. He also knew that an unfocused mind drifts more often to worry, regret and anxious what-ifs than it does to the promises of God. So he asks the Lord to help him direct his thoughts in healthy ways. Note: he does not ask God to stop his thoughts, but to direct them. We must do the same. Peace does not come from emptying our mind, but from anchoring it in God, his promises and his truth.
WOTW
Honorable mention goes to silver tsunami (as in, a silver tsunami of retiring business owners is reshaping the small-business landscape) and brain fry (a form of cognitive fatigue specific to some types of AI). Full honors go to AQ, which some believe AI makes more important than either IQ or EQ. What does the A in AQ stand for? Agility. (FWIW, I favor DQ over AQ, IQ or EQ. I’m particularly partial to its Blizzards.)
Without Comment
1) Per this Pew Report: 53% of U.S. adults say the ethics of Americans are “somewhat or very bad,” which is 25% higher than the all-country average. (The U.S. is the only nation where a majority believe their neighbors are more bad than good.).
2) A median-income household must now set aside 43% of its income to buy a median-priced home.
3) While 90% of America’s workforce believes their job is AI-proof, 57% of HR leaders expect their company to conduct layoffs next year, mostly driven by AI.
Eve Baer
I’m late to Eve Baer’s story. She’s the mother who has cared for her brain-injured son for decades, believing that even in a vegetative state he is able to process something. May she remind us of the Lord, who does not give up on us even when we “are dead in our trespasses and sins.”
Quotes Worth Requoting
1) “Christians will have done well if, in a hundred years, we’re known as the people who don’t kill the unborn or our elders.” Stanley Hauerwas.
2) “We lost everything and we lost nothing.” The comments of a father who lost home and all possessions in a fire, but whose wife and children were OK.
Overheard
1) Religion shames people for their dirty feet; Jesus washes them.
2) Americans know a great deal about the last ten minutes, a bit about the last ten days, less about the last ten years, and almost nothing about the last ten centuries.
3) You can’t convince people of what they already know but deny.
4) Eloquence is a skinny virtue.
RIP
Lou Holtz described himself saying, “I’m 5’ 10,” weigh 152 pounds, speak with a lisp, and appear to have been afflicted with beriberi and scurvy all my life.” He’d then joke that he was not a great athlete and that he’d graduated near the bottom of his high-school class. But all that was set up to attribute his success to faith, goal setting, sacrifice and discipline. I will miss him.
NOT
This article lists the corporate jargon we like the least. After orchestrating a blue-sky off-line thought experiment, I aligned our stakeholders for a decisioning process to catalyze a hard stop against using any of them.
Resources
Click here to hear my recent sermon on Psalm 1 – which is a meditation on meditation, and also a call to read, reflect, meditate and memorize Scripture. Click here to learn about Lakelight’s Reformation tour, which I’ll lead next Oct. We will visit Prague, Germany and Switzerland.
Nashville: TAOM > Mere Christianity
Many love Mere Christianity, but the Lewis book listed in Mortimer Adler’s Great Books of the Western World – and ranked seventh in NR’s most important books of the 20th century – was The Abolition of Man (TAOM). Why? Because in it, Lewis accurately describes how things will unfold post WWII. And he was right! Why isn’t TAOM more famous? Because while it’s short, it’s dense. If you want to understand it – and better understand today – and you live near Nashville – sign up for the Lakelight Live event on April 9th in Franklin. I’m speaking. It’s free. Details are here.
Closing Prayer
“Most gracious Father, we most humbly beseech you for your holy church. Fill it with all truth; in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purge it; where it is in error, direct it; where anything is amiss, reform it; where it is right, strengthen and confirm it; where it is in need, furnish it; where it is divided and torn apart, make up its breaches, O holy One of Israel. Amen.” (William Laud— 1573-1645)
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