December 11; Do More Than What Was Required Or Requested
MANAGEMENT BY THE BOOK:
365 Daily Bible Verse &
One-Minute Management Lessons For The Busy Faithful

December 11

If anyone forces you to go one mile,
go with them two miles.

Matthew 5:41

Do More Than What Was Required Or Requested

OverDeliver

Your Business Professor played basketball in my teen years under Coach Brown. He was an outstanding motivator although I didn’t know this at the time.

Which was odd, because in high school, I knew everything…

Coach Brown taught us the benefit of “over-extension” in our physical training.  On defense, a player can move quicker from a low crouch. A faster reaction could be possible if the center of gravity (butt) was as low as possible to the hardwood.

If the ideal height were, say, some two feet from the court’s surface — in a game — then Coach Brown would make us practice at a distance of one foot. We would aim beyond the target–giving us a new meaning to “stretch goals.”

We would drill at 12 inches, but during a game, getting tired, we’d only be able to lower the gravity down to 24 inches. The fatigue would get us down as the game progressed. We would practice at one foot but would end up at two feet – which was where we needed to be.

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St. Matthew writes, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that if we are compelled to carry a load for a mile, then we should carry it for two miles. The Greek word for compel, is,

A word of Persian origin but adopted also into Latin [the reference was to] public couriers (tabellarii), stationed by appointment of the king of Persia at fixed localities, with horses ready for use, in order to transmit royal messages from one to another and so convey them the more speedily to their destination…

These couriers had authority to press into their service, in case of need, horses, vessels, even men they met. (Yeager 1976).

Randy Yeager, Ph.D., a Baptist Bible scholar who did research at The Catholic University of America, quotes Jamieson, Fausset & Brown in their Scriptural commentary. Yeager writes that we are to,

Do more than the law requires of you. J. F. & B.’s remark here is pertinent: “…an allusion probably to the practice of the Romans and some eastern nations, who, when government dispatches had to be forwarded, obliged the people not only to furnish horses and carriages, but to give personal attendance, often at great inconvenience, when required.

But the thing here demanded is a readiness to submit to unreasonable demands of whatever kind, rather than raise quarrels, with all the evils resulting from them.” (Yeager 1976).

Matthew tells us to over-deliver even if unjustly required.

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Our high school basketball team wasn’t all that good. I don’t remember our record but I remember the life lesson and the business application: do more than what the boss asks. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Matthew 5:41

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(Thayer, en. Loc., cf. Joseph. Ant. 13, 2,3) quoted by Dr. Yeager in The Renaissance New Testament, page 430, volume one.