I took a couple of vacation days Thursday and Friday to repaint our kitchen. After 15 years the walls were nicked and scratched and Anita wanted to change the color. I told her I would do it in the winter, but once the weather broke I would be busy outside. It took the first day just to patch the walls, tape around the cupboards, and cut the old caulk out behind the counters. The second day was painting, repainting, trimming, and re-trimming after I took the tape off.

We don’t like change, yet we spend money and time because we like change. Its my expectation that I’ll never have to paint that room again in my lifetime. We create change so we never have to change it again. Isn’t that an interesting contrast.

What have you recently changed that you never want to change again?

Tags: Change, paint

I attended the DeKalb County Ministerial Association meeting Wednesday. There were ministers from all over the county, and we had asked three men who led larger food banks in various towns to give us a report on how things were going. That led to a larger group discussion on how to really help the poor.

One of our members is a Christian Counselor and he began pressing us for programs that really work in the lives of these people who live in perpetual poverty. Another leader spoke up and said, “I think you’re looking for a program that works with them, and there isn’t one. If a person doesn’t want to change, you can’t change them. It takes one-on-one intensive care.” And he shared a success story of a woman that took 2 years to develop.

And I shared that the only thing that changes people is a changed mind, and that’s where ministers come in, and we have our job cut out for us.

What experience do you have working with people with a poverty mentality.

Tags: Change, poverty

Once there was a boy whose parents name him Odd. Other children used to tease him about his name, but he stuck out his chest and refused to be bothered. As he grew up, people continued to make fun of his moniker – even after he became a successful attorney.

Finally, as an old man, he wrote out his last wishes. “I’ve been the butt of jokes all my life,” he said, “I’ll not have people making fun of me after I’m gone.” He instructed that his tombstone not bear his name.

After his death, people noticed the large blank stone in the cemetery and said, “That’s odd.”

We can do whatever we choose to get people to do what they should, but they are only going to do what is natural. The only way to change someone’s nature is for them to be born again. And that changes everything.

Tags: Change, humor, name, tombstone

Two nimrods flew deep into remote Canada for elk hunting. Their pilot, seeing they had bagged six elk, told them the plane could carry only four out.

“But the plane that carried us out last year was exactly like this one,” the hunters protested. “The horsepower was the same, the weather was similar, and we had six elk then.”

Hearing this, the pilot reluctantly agreed to try. They loaded up and took off, but sure enough, there was insufficient power to climb out of the valley with all that weight, and they crashed. As they stumbled from the wreckage, one hunter asked the other if he knew where they were.

“Well, I’m not sure,” replied the second, “but I think we’re about two miles from where we crashed last year.”

Doing the same thing again but expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. If you want a different result, you have to do something different. Let’s all wise up.

Tags: Change, humor, hunting

One more blog on change. Henry Kissinger is a sought after expert on world affairs. Few people understand what happens around the world politically more than him. He said this of change: “For any student of history, change is the law of life. Any attempt to contain it guarantees an explosion down the road; the more rigid the adherence to the status quo, the more violent the ultimate outcome will be.”

On a lighter note, Ken Gaub says it like this: “If you continue to think like you always thought, you’ll always get what you always got!”

Ready or not, your life will change!

Tags: Change, Kissinger

I forgot the guy’s name who said, “Never trust anyone over 30!” A couple of years later he turned 30 and we haven’t heard anything from him since. William James, famous professor of philosophy and psychology at Harvard University, once stated that after 30 we become set like plaster and never change. But that has been proven incorrect.

John D. Rockefeller had become the world’s only billionaire. But he was a miserable man who couldn’t sleep, had no one who loved him, and who needed bodyguards for his safety.

Then at age 53 he was stricken with a rare disease. He lost all his hair, and his body became thin and shrunken. He was given a year or so to live.

Faced with the reality of death, Rockefeller started thinking about eternal issues, and suddenly began to change. He gave away his money to help churches and the poor. He established the Rockefeller Foundation, which has underwritten critical health research. Today, we don’t remember him for his wealth, we remember him for his generosity.

His health improved, and contrary to the doctor’s prediction, he lived to be 98. Don’t tell me people can’t change.

Tags: Change, generosity, Rockefeller