Issue 474
I want to invite you to take another look inside yourself to forage for lessons on work and life. To help you with this exploration let me ask you some questions. Why do we find it so hard to learn from history? Why do we often repeat mistakes from the past? Why do we so quickly forget lessons learned and truths exposed? They’re hard questions and you might not even agree with them. Look at financial history, and you will see remarkable repeats of mistakes which lead to successive crashes. It’s as if we ignored the earlier lessons. Look at political history and you will see governments repeating tactical errors of their predecessors. Explore military history and you will see wars fought over similar power games, century after century. Before you forget, these pieces are about work, so may I remind you that so are finance, politics and the military. Every workplace contains them all with small letters, and is influenced by them all with large letters. The common factor in every workplace is people. Is there something in you which will help to explain these repeated actions? As we reach the last chapter of Nehemiah’s journal he is commuting from Jerusalem to his job with the King. As he returns to Jerusalem he finds five major problems which illustrate that people just don’t seem to learn from history. They are all obvious, external, structural problems but we will look at them as problems of the heart and mind – for that is what they are. Nehemiah’s first challenge was that the Israelites were admitting Moabites and Ammonites into the assembly. This language is strange to our ears but if you see what that meant, you can learn. Have you noticed that inside of yourself there are thoughts which feed you and thoughts which curse you? Some thoughts are nourishing and they are like food and drink to your mind, flooding your whole soul with courage, strength and energy. Other thoughts sew doubts, division, discouragement and despair. It’s as if part of us seeks life and part of us is self-destructive. Nehemiah explained that the history of the Moabites and the Ammonites was to withhold food and water and bring a curse to the Israelites. Now you can see the point. If you assemble your thoughts and allow in curses and starvation you will struggle. Nehemiah showed the people that this had been written many years before in the word of God. Look around or listen to the conversations in your teams. Some words nourish, some starve, some curse, some bless – they are a reflection of what’s going on inside. Nehemiah’s mind was no exception. He too had to fight with the temptation to let the unhealthy thoughts into his mind. But Nehemiah knew it. He knew it because he kept going back to God and the sacred writings for wisdom. That’s why he stood out from the crowd and why he led the crowd. Food, water or curses. What will you let in? Will you press the self-destruct button or switch the light on? Check out Nehemiah’s journal and you will find another aside which tells you how he thought. Having exposed the risk that people were taking He says, “God turned the curse into a blessing”. Now God has a history of that. (we’ll look at the next two problems next time please don’t forget this one!) Bible Section Nehemiah 13:1-3 On that day the Book of Moses was read aloud in the hearing of the people and there it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever be admitted into the assembly of God, 2 because they had not met the Israelites with food and water but had hired Balaam to call a curse down on them. (Our God, however, turned the curse into a blessing.) 3 When the people heard this law, they excluded from Israel all who were of foreign descent.
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Work well
Geoff Shattock
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