Business Matters: A Francis Kong DevotionalSample

CHRIST AND BUSINESS ׀ DO THEY MATCH? Back in the year 1927 the businessman was bringing his wife, his newly born baby and a nurse home from the hospital in a brand new Lincoln Continental. What a misfortune it was because the car was caught up on the tracks and they could hear a whistle blowing from a distance. With the second nature of a businessman, I know the man would rather risk his own life than admit he couldn't handle the problem. He looked at his watch and said calmly, "It is 4:05 and just in time." "Oh my baby!" screamed his wife. "We need to get out!", she pleaded. "What?!" The man snapped, ׂand leave a $6000 Lincoln on the tracks!? If you will just calm down, I'll get it started," the man said with confidence. But the wife refused to calm down, and the train came into view. The wife with the baby and the nurse hurriedly left the car but not the businessman. The businessman leaned out on the window and yelled to his wife, "Hey Susan, in case I get killed, the key to the vault is behind the Shakespeare book in my study room." The conductor, slowing down for a stop anyway, managed to halt the train ten feet from the car. "Oh no!" and the businessman began cursing. "Now I've got to find a new hiding place for the key to the vault!" Business people like me are very practical people, sometimes too practical for our own good. But how can you blame us? The world today is entirely different. The pressures and the tensions associated with the unthinkable fast pace of change is enough to blow anybody's mind. And the unwelcome challenges of a receding economy make it worse. It was just in the end portion of the last century when new words were invented in the work scene. Words like: Downscaling. Restructuring, Downsizing, Multi-tasking, Outsourcing and Streamlining. "Job Security" has become a contradiction in terms. Less people today do more work but their pay has not increased. Time Management: is a joke heard during increasingly rare coffee breaks. "Let's do lunch" has come to mean, "You sit at your desk and I'll sit at mine, and we'll try to spend lunch time crawling from under the pile of unfinished projects that were due yesterday" Never have we been busier. Never have we been more stressed out. And there seem to be no offer of relief in sight. And so in the midst of this turmoil, we yearn for stability, a sense that as the winds of change intensifies into a hurricane magnitude, there is something solid and steadfast on which we can rely. Could it be possible to have Christ operate in our lives even when we are in the very competitive world of business? Challenge: Why not spend some time and think about this question. ׂHow does Christ become operative in the cut-throat world of business?