When I was a younger man, I decided to accept an invitation to start tutoring youth in math and physics. It was something I thought I’d really enjoy, there was a need for it with a lot of high school kids who needed some extra help, and, I could charge $50 an hour. That’s because there were a lot of kids going to a free public high school and getting a good education, and it was worth an investment in a tutor to keep them there!
So, I was once helping a student who was having trouble in his junior year with physics. When the science fair came along, I gave him a suggestion from an idea that came to me: how about finding sweet spots on baseball bats? He liked it and ran with it. He won the whole science fair for his physics class. Then, he won the whole science fair for all the juniors. Then, he won the whole science fair for the school. He placed third in the state of Massachusetts and won a $10,000 prize scholarship. And a few months earlier, he was getting a D in junior-level physics. Not a bad investment. That’s what happens when you can find the sweet spots and you like to share them.
I worked as a research and development engineer in a small, high-tech start up for a number of years. On one project, we were trying to invent a transmission to put into the wheel of an army truck, so you could put an electric motor in each wheel. We were doing high-tech stuff, so we had proposed to use a magnetic fluid that you could control inside the guts of the transmission. I jumped into that one and did some of my own analysis to find the sweet spots that you would need to have inside the transmission to make it work, and then how we could do that. The Army really liked it and so they gave us a 2-year, contract for three-quarters of a million dollars. I was earning some good dough, but not 750,000 dollars. Not a bad payoff! For finding the sweet spots and sharing them.
These days, I’m not tutoring physics or solving technical dilemmas for big bucks. Now, I write, I preach and teach, start different types of groups and social projects, and I am with God and happy sharing the amazing life with people. But, it has a cost. I don’t make the big bucks anymore. I don’t have the house or the girlfriend or the steady career, the popular social scene. I work with people who are poor, struggling at the bottoms of society. I am not on the favorites list of a lot of the religious people. So, why?
Because I’m finding and sharing sweet spots like never before!
I love to do that.
That is who I am.
Now, I want to do a quick little bible study in this one, bear with me a minute here, we’re going somewhere!
The Gospel of Luke has a story about Jesus and Peter. It’s their first encounter, Jesus is preaching to people on the shore, and then he gets in Peter’s boat and tells him to go out to deep water to do some fishing. Maybe you know the story, Peter and the guys have had no luck fishing the night before, but they take Jesus at his word and set out and end up catching an unbelievable amount of fish. Right? And then Jesus tells Peter not to be afraid, because he’s going to make him a fisher of men.
So now let’s fast forward to the Acts of the Apostles, which is really the other half of the Gospel of Luke (yes, they were actually written as one book). And there, after Jesus is gone and leaves his Spirit for the apostles, lo and behold, you see Peter doing the preaching and teaching that Jesus was doing! And in one day, he got 3,000 people to be baptized and shortly afterwards 2,000 more.
Not a bad payoff for Jesus, huh? You get one guy and he can bring in thousands more, right? But here’s the question: what’s in it for Peter? There’s no more fishing business, no more house and home, no more cash, he’s touching and hanging around with some of the outcasts of Jerusalem, he ends up in prison and on the enemy list of the local rulers. So, why? Why is Peter doing it all?
Because He. Is. Fishing. Fishing! Like never before!
And peter loves to fish.
That’s who he is.
We all have a call from God in this life, and it’s a call to leave behind upward mobility. You’re going to have to come down. That’s what the cross is all about. Now, that sounds tough, and it’s easy to focus on the what you might lose, but don’t be afraid – you are going to love it.
You will become the person you really are.
You’ll be doing just what you really love to do.
Like never before.
“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake
and that of the gospel will save it.” (Mt 8:34-35)
ALM 