Be Your Best

Fasten your seatbelt! 2020 is going to be a bumpy, muddy ride to say the lease. Science fiction is becoming reality right before our eyes. At the same time greed and the apostasies of both political and religious common sense are about to destroy every good thing mankind has ever produced. Are the stresses and strains of this pressure-cooker world beginning to take their toll? Do you long for a return of “the good old days” Perhaps you can identify with the frustration of this disillusioned observer: “The world is too big for us. Too much going on; too many crimes; too much violence and excitement. Try as you will, you get behind in the race. In spite of yourself, it’s an incessant strain to keep pace and still you lose ground. Science empties discoveries on you so fast that you stagger beneath them in hopeless bewilderment. The political world has news so rapidly you’re out of breath trying to keep pace with who’s in and who’s out. Everything is high pressure. Human nature can’t endure much more.” So, I’ll ask once more: Do you long for “the good old’ days” when today’s problems were yet unknown?  If so, you might be interested to know that the quotation above is excerpted from an editorial in the Atlantic Journal. The date: June 16, 1883! Yes, the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. Solomon’s wisdom still rings true: “Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’ For it is not wise to ask such questions” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). Regardless the time, regardless the culture, regardless the particular problems of the moment, the words of the Savior bring comfort to the troubled soul: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).


Douglas Malloch (1877-1938) was an American poet, short story writer and associate editor of American Lumbermen, a Chicago trade paper. He loved his beloved Michigan and was commissioned to write her state song. Having grown up in the midst of the forests, logging camps and sawmills of Michigan, Malloch became known as the “Lumberman’s Poet”. He is probably best known for his wonderful poem, “Be A Bush If You Can’t Be A Tree”. ‘If you can’t be a pine on top of a hill, be a scrub in the valley – but be the best little scrub by the side of the rill; be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a bush, be a bit of the grass, doing something for somebody’s sake. If you can’t be a muskie, then just be a bass – but be the liveliest bass in the lake. We can’t all be captains, some have to be crew; There’s something for all of us here, there’s a big work, and little for people to do, and the task we must do is the near. If you can’t be a highway, then just be a trail; If you can’t be the sun, then be a star, it isn’t by size that you win or you fail – be the best of whatever you are!’ 

Those with one talent fret that they do not have two. Those with two talents fret that they do not have five. In the parable that Jesus told (Matthew 25:14-30) the focus was not on the number of talents a person has, but on the use of the talents one has. Those who used their talent, whether five or two, received the same approval and reward (v. 21, 23). The one talent man was not condemned because he only had one talent, but because he did not use the talent he had. He was a “wicked and lazy” servant (v. 26). What is the moral of the story? You can sit and mope because you do not have the talent of others, or you can use the talent you do have in the service of the King! In other words, “Be A Bush If You Can’t Be A Tree”. Be the best scrub, bass, crewmember, trail, star and servant of Christ you can be! ”Be the best of whatever and whoever you are!” Make this your 2020 resolution for the rest of your life.