August 14, 2024
Leadership Notes
I can't believe I would ever be writing these words. It's as if an era has come to a close. Life is an amazing journey. As the cliché puts it, when one door closes, another one opens. I’ve had an interesting life and career. It’s time to move on to something new.
There is a place in Clinton where you can buy all sorts of rocks in all sorts of shapes and sizes for landscaping or any of your other rock needs. My wife and I have now become rock people. We have curated a beautiful assembly of rocks, stones, and boulders in the garden beds of our backyard. It’s nice to begin a new pastime in life.
When we first moved into our home eleven years ago, we had no idea there were dozens of rocks buried in a landscaping mound in a back corner of the backyard. We were planting early one season, several years after moving in. Each new spot for a plant or shrub or flower, we’d hit another rock. It was so much fun. It’s a growing thing. After all the plants and shrubs have gone into hibernation and the flowers have given up the ghost, we still have artfully arranged, lovely variegated rocks and stones and boulders to enjoy. God’s creation is amazing.
Then, about two years ago, as we were doing some landscaping work in another corner of the backyard, lo-and-behold, what do we find, but remnants of a pond. There was tubing and the casing for a water pump. With that, it all fell together. The rocks were relocated to be turned into a mound as the pond was disappeared. The rocks third-life is now a beautiful rock garden. God is good all the time!
If you ever get a chance, and have a hankering for rocks, stones, or boulders, take a trip up to Topsoils of Clinton. They are the premier aggregate supplier in Lenawee county. In seasons like this, in one of the most geographically pleasing states in the Union, you can’t help but be reminded of Psalm 8:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
If the rocks could shout out, they would testify to the glory of God’s name. This is such a wonderful world. And I’ll say it again, there’s no place I’d rather live than in this little corner of God’s beautiful creation. The grass is plenty green on this side of the fence.
Here are two related thoughts from Viktor Frankl:
1. “It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a
stand toward the conditions.”
2. “Everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the
last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any
given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Finally, your Moment of Spurgeon:
“Sanctification must not be forgotten or overlaid by justification.
We must teach plainly that the faith which saved the soul is not a
dead faith, but a faith which operated with purifying effect upon
our entire nature, and produces in us fruits of righteousness…”
Always of Good Cheer,
Richard
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