Tag: faith

Humility of Mary

As I continue my Advent reading plan, seeking God for new revelation in the Nativity story, I am struck by the simple humility of Mary.

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. – Luke 1:38

If God wanted to achieve massive notoriety in the birth of His Son, He could have used a highly public figure, but that would never be the persona Jesus took. Jesus would set in motion a new style of leadership, that of a servant, and God started that process in choosing His vessel. If He had chosen a famous or wealthy person, the rest of us would feel disqualified. Or worse, that person might have mistakenly think they “earned” the privilege to be chosen. But God used a humble girl, likely a teen, which would give hope to everyone who hasn’t felt worthy, and would keep any of us from thinking that being used by God is something to be earned.

I, for one, am grateful that God can and does use normal people to accomplish His purposes. I pray that I never fall into the trap of thinking that success is a result of my own humanity.

Lessons from the life of Steve Jobs

I’m about two thirds of the way through Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs and it has been a fascinating read. I’m not sure it’s possible that anyone is unfamiliar with this corporate icon who transformed multiple industries. Like him or not, respect him or not, I am seeing some powerful lessons here:

  • Learning is everywhere: Steve Jobs was an avid learner; the stories of his college days are ripe with a wide variety of experiences, which he incorporated into his creative genius over the next 40 years.
  • Integration will breed innovation: Steve was a fanatic about integrating hardware and software, as well as design and engineering. As his teams worked in both of these spheres at the same time (often only by his willpower), they repeatedly developed entirely different ways to look at the same problem and often solutions that would never have been seen otherwise.
  • Intuitive and simple = customer friendly: Having grown up with Apple products since elementary school, I have seen over and over the effort that Jobs and this company put into making products that are designed to work the way people would want them to work. People are willing to pay more, often religiously, for the simplicity that Apple is known for.
  • There is power in rejecting your present reality: Steve is said to have operated in a “reality distortion field” such that he believed things could be accomplished that seemed impossible to the logical eye. He pushed his team to limits that would strain even the most flexible, and broke many. Not every time, but many times, his people surprised even themselves by achieving completely unrealistic goals. This “reality distortion field” has been regarded as one of Jobs’ most significant character flaws, but it also contributed to some of his greatest successes.

SIDEBAR: We may not take the “reality distortion field” to the extreme, but all of us as leaders have to make a decision that there are some things which may not line up with our current reality, that we should work and believe for something greater. In his “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. called the people of our nation to a new reality, which I considered here. As leaders and people of faith, Hebrews 11 charges us that “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see”. Are you working toward a better reality in your world, believing that God will bring it to pass, despite what you see around you?

Vision vs. Reality

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke these words in August of 1963, he pulled from the writings of the prophet Isaiah to speak of a vision for a new America. That vision, though profound, was nothing like the reality his 200,000 listeners faced in their daily lives.

This is the essence of vision, though. It has to be about speaking something into existence that isn’t already there. Because only as you speak something different from reality can you encourage listeners

  • to believe for something greater,


  • to engage their energies to work toward change,


  • and to hope that this vision has a chance of becoming more than just vision.


As leaders, our job is similar to that of Dr. King’s. We have to seek God for the vision He desires for our organization, and then use our words and efforts to move toward that new reality.

We sit in a different America today, nearly 50 years later. An America that is much more like what Dr. King dreamed of than what he faced at that time. We aren’t all the way there yet, but his leadership and that of many others contributed to the change he was believing for.