Quit work, Make music.

This t-shirt/ bumper sticker/ credo of the 9-5 zombie, has stuck with me ever since I first heard it. It may be because I have been dying to write some music myself. Or maybe because it has a way about it that everyone wants to follow. In this one statement we find a chord being struck in all of us. It might not to quit work or make music but it is relating to our need for significance not success.

Success and significance seem like polar opposites at times. The corporate world wants to tell you to be successful you must first "sell off your values" and everything that you hold dear needs to take a back seat to "getting the job done". In many other occupations we see the stress of the mundane has overshadowed any meaning found in the task that the employee is being paid to do. Where has significance gone?

Secretly most of us have dreams of becoming someone great. To be someone known for their humanitarian work abroad or for their talents finally being discovered and the known-world benefiting from them. Or for you it might be to take your son or daughter and pour into them everything good so that they will become a difference maker in a world that badly needs them.

Whichever it might be for you we all long for significance for our lives. Yet somewhere along the way we get drug into the race for success. To be the best so the boss will notice. To work as many over-time hours as possible so that this weeks check is pretty hefty. 'Selling your soul' to the company so your CEO will come out shining like a star and hope that he will repay you in the form of a raise.

Could there be a way of blending the two? Though they seem to be opposite extremes what if you could find significance in your success? Success will always be found in significance but it doesn't always work the other way. How could we take a little humanitarianism and being overworked and underpaid and arrive at a healthy balance? What would that look like?

The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance- and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.
-Oprah Winfrey

May we come to find that it's not in what we do that determines our worth in the world but how we do it. The things that come and go are a gauge of success but elements that are everlasting determine our significance. Your occupation might be rooted in things that will come and go; cars, money, equipment etc. But your job is found in those things that will last; your marriage, children, and relationships. Go and be Successfully Significant.

Take care,
Pastor Chris