April 26; Follow Me;
MANAGEMENT BY THE BOOK:
365 Daily Bible Verse &
One-Minute Management Lessons For The Busy Faithful

Chapter Four: Relationships; 26 April

give thanks in all circumstances;

for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:18

Grateful

The car fell off the lift. The auto mechanic was elevating a car on a hydraulic lift and did not follow all of the exhaustive safety check list in the muffler shop. No one was hurt but it did make a mess and the lawyers cleaned up. And senior management got, shall we say, excited.

But not Mr. Carter. He was the shop foreman who was rock steady in any situation. Your Business Professor was a sales guy who called on his shop. I may have taught his team the latest in muffler technology but he taught me more about timeless emotion control. After a conversation with Carter, even the crunched car’s owner laughed.

He was not much moved by terrific sales days or cars falling out of the sky. He was the same steady guy. He had an internal consistency that was not moved by external happenstance.

The shop manager Carter could have been the model for popular poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox, who lived at the turn of the 1900’s,

One ship drives east and another drives west

With the selfsame winds that blow.

‘Tis the set of the sails,

And Not the gales,

That tell us the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate;

As we voyage along through life,

‘Tis the set of a soul

That decides its goal,

And not the calm or the strife.

Yes, the job of the Board of Directors and senior leadership is to provide the resources needed by the organization. But there are some managers, some entrepreneurs who always seem to deliver the numbers; to complete the job whatever the circumstances.

The devil himself could bind those managers in chains and they would still sing hymns.

Often the circumstances and the things around us do not much matter. Circumstance can be no more than a tool used by a craftsman. Even in modern photography, the photographer is the constant. The American Journalism Review reports,

For many photojournalists…the problem is not the iPhone, which is merely a device, after all. The problem is that using it—or any camera, professionally requires an understanding of visual storytelling, which is about sequencing and patience, framing, knowing what to exclude as much as what to include.

We are to be of constant character and thankful for our situations. And of those resources we have and do not have. As the passage from 1 Thessalonians 5:18 suggests, the professional manager should, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

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