The photo and the file

Just a few thoughts for a very talented author - Max Lucado (I get these weekly emails from him)

Each June I put my calendar together for the coming year. June is the month of D-Day. I don’t mean D-Day as in Normandy invasion. I mean D-Day as in decisions to be made.

This morning I began the process of decision. I opened the “Decision File” and began reading the speaking invitations.

Something happens as a person fields the invitations of others. He or she begins to feel important. As I looked at the letters, it dawned on me how vital I was to the progress of humanity.

I wondered how the earth stayed on its axis before I was born. I nodded my head in understanding at the letter that read, “You are the one for this meeting.” I put my hand under my shirt and rubbed the S on the red jersey—“Super Max.”

I was feeling puffy and proud when I read the last letter. But as I put down the file, I noticed another request. One that didn’t make it into the folder. One that was lying on my desk.

It had no date, no signature, no deadline. It wasn’t a letter or a phone message. It was a photograph—a photograph so recent that it had no frame. It was a portrait of a mom and a dad encircled by three little girls. Our family portrait.

The singular photo lying in the shadow of the stack of requests seemed to whisper a question that only I could answer:

“Max, who will win?”

There is only so much sand in the hourglass. Who gets it?

Clovis Chappell, a minister from a century back, used to tell the story of two paddleboats. They left Memphis about the same time, traveling down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. As they traveled side by side, sailors from one vessel made a few remarks about the snail’s pace of the other.

Words were exchanged. Challenges were made. And the race began. Competition became vicious as the two boats roared through the Deep South.

One boat began falling behind. Not enough fuel. There had been plenty of coal for the trip, but not enough for a race. As the boat dropped back, an enterprising young sailor took some of the ship’s cargo and tossed it into the ovens. When the sailors saw that the supplies burned as well as the coal, they fueled their boat with the material they had been assigned to transport. They ended up winning the race, but burned their cargo.

God has entrusted cargo to us, too: children, spouses, friends. Our job is to do our part in seeing that this cargo reaches its destination.

From In the Eye of the Storm
Copyright 1991, Max Lucado