Wisdom Nugget: All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.
Last week I gathered all my pastors and leaders together and played
the movie "The Ultimate Gift". I had heard about the movie
from Prof Vin Anigbogu during my training at the Top Executive Leadership
Course (TELC) at the Institute for National Transformation (INT). I
must confess I was not prepared for what I saw. The impact of the movie
was so strong it left me literally under the anointing for 3 days. It
is a must watch for your Leadership Retreat. Today let me begin a life
changing series as part of my inspiration from that movie. I have titled
this series "The Ultimate Gifts". I found the patterns very interesting.
(1) Man with the (same) ability to be a creator or inventor (just as his creator is).
(2) Then He brings man into the garden so he can catch a vision of his future so he can see all the spheres or areas where he can possibly unleash his creativity.
(3) Then man is given WORK to do apparently tailored towards the specific area of Adam's creative or innovative interest or ability.
(4) Once man had developed good work ethics the next thing God did was to train him on the discipline of making right choices from wrong ones.
(5) That settled and having turned his work into a JOB, God felt Adam was now matured enough to handle a woman so gave him a wife.
Notice Adam first got a WORK before he got a JOB. A work is never scarce and always available. A JOB is what is sometimes difficult to come by. The difference? Work is any opportunity to serve that you seize without considering remuneration or profit. While a job is work that gets adequately rewarded. Those who pick up work always end up with the job. But those who pursue the job often have a tough time and face a stiff competition to get one.
The great terrific mountains and the wild beasts in them were created by His words, the scary seas and their great whales at his words, God formed the galaxies and all the beautiful birds at his words but interestingly God refused to give rain or dig one inch of ground after creation but waited for man to do so.
Question: Why? Why didn't life just make everything easy by commanding the garden to take care of itself. Why does man have to till the ground before eating from it?
Answer: Man was created for work. Work is man's way of displaying his God given creative nature. God never engages in mass production. He only produces a prototype, injects into it the seed element and commands it to "reproduce after its kind". Only the raw material is provided and man is left to exercise his creative ability to process the finished product. Nations and individuals who have taken advantage of this ability to process raw or natural resources are wealthy and those who remain producers of raw materials or natural resources and do not process it are poor. This is why Nigeria for example is the world's 6th largest producer of crude oil and America's 4th largest supplier (especially the lead free Bonny Light which is purer than what the Middle East produces) yet because we have no functional refineries, we are still amongst the world's poorest nations.
Work as far as I know is not a burden but man's opportunity to display and manifest the multi-faceted aspects of Nature's goodness to humanity.
That was why Thomas A. Edison said "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." Unfortunately, today when men take the credit or glory for their inventions. If only they understood that the work of creation was being continued through them... Those who pick up work always end up with the job. But those who pursue the job often have a tough time and face a stiff competition to get one.
. It was Albert Camus who said "A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened" and John Dewey concludes "To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness."
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