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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Love @ Work Always Trusts

“But he promised …” or “she said she had a buyer lined up” are not good excuses in my business for failing to address a borrower’s delinquency. Compassion and reasonable forbearance may be acceptable within reason, but simply taking a borrower’s word for it – particularly when most of our borrowers are real estate speculators – isn’t considered to be very smart business practice.

"Love … always trusts” says 1 Corinthians 13:7. Always? Isn’t that a recipe for being walked all over, being constantly hurt or disappointed, and opening ourselves up to being ripped off by all and sundry? On a business level, it just isn’t how things are done is it? Gone are the days when deals were struck with a handshake and the “word of a gentleman”. So what on earth is Paul talking about?

Perhaps a good place to start is asking whether Jesus took this approach? Did He always trust what was said to Him, or entrust Himself to others? How about John 2:23-25 (emphasis mine)? “Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man's testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.”

So most likely this isn’t about blind, naïve trust – we need to know what is in a (wo)man. Perhaps Jesus’ statement to the disciples “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16) is helpful. Trusting in this context involves looking for the best, expecting others to be honest and ethical, but still taking the necessary precautions in case they are not.

In business, the precautions involve legal documentation of the consequences of non-performance in a contract. For example, if a borrower doesn’t make the loan payments promised, they stand to lose the property against which they have borrowed. I’ll take a shot at the current residential foreclosures debate in an upcoming Justice @ Work post, but the key here is that it is prudent to in some way insure against dishonesty or failure to keep promises to minimize the damage.

On a personal level, there are precautions we should take too. “Love always trusts” suggests that we should expect the best, but prepare for the worst. Some people have been hurt and disappointed so much that they have become gun-shy, and feel that they’d rather never take the risk of trusting another person. I have been fortunate on the other hand, and have suffered relatively few personal disappointments and as a result tend to assume another person is trustworthy regardless of evidence to the contrary. Either extreme has its dangers. Trust without precautions may be an unnecessary risk, but failure to trust runs all sorts of other risks (failure to build relationships, loss of business opportunities, etc). If we are “shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” we will have our eyes open, and take all reasonable precautions, but at the same time we will believe in the other person and take the risk of allowing them to show their trustworthiness.

With this balance, it is indeed not just possible, but mandatory, for love to always trust.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Vacation @ Work – Return

Why is it that vacations seem to lose their effect so quickly? Just an hour back at work and it’s as though I was never gone! In fact, it’s a real struggle not to spend the last couple of days thinking about what might be waiting for me on my return to work.

Am I the only one who feels like nothing got done while I was away, and that the clear instructions I thought I’d left somehow didn’t get followed? Or that no old crises were resolved but several new ones have arisen? Or that the activities that had plenty of time to complete have now become emergencies because no progress was made.

No wonder returning to work is so hard sometimes. In my case, I found a complex deal not advanced, a legal issue not noticed, negotiations with a tax authority on a go-slow, and hold ups for a cash influx that would cover our end of October payroll. None of this is really so out of the ordinary. The question is how do we handle it?

In theory, I returned from vacation refreshed, reinvigorated and ready to go. In practice, I must confess that this deluge of disappointment got me down within an hour of my arrival back. When I say it got me down, what it really did was to drag my eyes down – looking at the immediate challenges and issues and no longer looking to the sovereign, gracious God who called me here in the first place. How easily we can fall sometimes!

Where was my gratitude to my colleagues for keeping things going (even if not in the way I would have done them) so that I could take time off? Where was my acknowledgement that if things didn’t get finished, they wouldn’t necessarily have done if I’d been here (certainly true of some of them)? Why was I not prepared to admit that it was my poor preparation and delegation that had led to some of my disappointments? You’d think I’d learn.

OK enough self-flagellation! There are several lessons here to be learned I think.
  1. Vacations provide an opportunity not just to relax and rest, but also to refocus ad recharge. This is done by taking time with God, extending devotional times, walking or sitting with Him, talking through difficult spiritual matters, and sharing love with others.
  2. Preparation for vacations is important – providing clear statements of expectations from others (and making sure they’re reasonable)
  3. Preparation for return to work is more than just forcing stress and worry under the rug till we get back. We must expect surprises and approach them with the healthier perspective our vacation should have provided.
  4. While we are on vacation, others are trying to take up the slack – their stress and workload have gone up. Recognizing this with gratitude is far better than complaining about shortcomings.
Hmm – perhaps I should take another vacation in short order so that I can try these things out.