The job isn't big enough.

As a keen young man of promise I progressed rapidly in a certain manufacturing company from an after-school delivery boy with a weekly pay packet of coins and one solitary banknote to the manager of a busy warehouse with staff under my care and a $17,000-a-year executives’ salary (very generous in those days) with equally generous 'fringe benefits' including two tailor-made suits a year and twice-weekly dining vouchers.

In order to commit to a life of service to others, I chose to leave all of this to train as a community health nurse with the prospect of less than $5,000-a-year after graduation.

The company's Managing Director argued long for me to stay, offering me an increase in my annual salary to $20,000 and he dangled the carrot of extra benefits including free golf-club membership and less hour’s work.

I turned it all down, explaining that the money was certainly great enough, the fiscal benefits were generous enough, the prestige was big enough, the social-connections were grand enough, the extra leisure time was inviting enough, the material rewards were large enough, but the job itself was too small.

-- Lionel Hartley

 Sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.

Eph 1:13  … ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise.

 

"Many years ago I worked for a company with the menial task of tying parcels for posting. Each parcel was sealed with a strip of adhesive tape. The purpose of the tape was to stop the parcel from falling apart. When we are sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, it helps to prevent us from falling apart!"

-- Dr Lionel Hartley, The Blessings of Ephesians One (booklet), Philadelphia Press, 1989 (Available free from www.lrhartley.com)

 Why we Drank.

While working in a psychiatric hospital I was responsible for co-ordinating Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for recovering alcoholics. Because I had never personally experienced alcohol use or abuse I found it a challenge identifying personally with the attendees' addictions. 

One recovering alcoholic sensed this and he handed me a hand-written scrap of paper with these words on it: 

"We drank for happiness and became unhappy.  We drank for joy and became miserable.  We drank for sociability and became argumentative.  We drank for sophistication and became obnoxious.  We drank for friendship and made enemies.  We drank for sleep and awakened without rest.  We drank for strength and felt weak.  We drank with the excuse that it was medicinal and acquired health problems.  We drank for relaxation and got the shakes.  We drank for bravery and became afraid.  We drank for confidence and became doubtful.  We drank to make conversation easier and slurred our speech.  We drank to feel heavenly and ended up feeling like hell.  We drank to forget and were forever haunted.  We drank for freedom and became slaves.  We drank to erase problems and saw them multiply.  We drank to cope with life and invited death."

-- Lionel Hartley