an excerpt (4)

To succeed at anything you have to make trade-offs. Here are 3 of the biggest:
1) Immediate pleasure for personal growth. It takes decades to grow an oak tree, but days to grow a squash. Which do you want to be? Are you willing to discipline yourself?
2) Everything for one thing. The younger you are the more experimenting you should do. But once you've found God's purpose for your life, stick with it, give it all youve got, and refuse to be sidetracked. (Philippians 3:13)
3) Quantity for quality. You don't really pay for things with money, you pay with time. For example, you might say, "In five years I'll have enough to buy my dream home, then I'll slow down." Five years from now could be one tenth of your adult life. By translating the dollar value of something into time, youll knowwhether its worthwhile investment.
[source unknown]

I don't fully agree with this stuff. I would prefer to be a squash over an oak tree. I love squash. (The name gives it bad press, I think.)
I love the unappealing nature of the second one. Who wants to give up more for less? God only makes sense because He doesn't. That reminds me of something I realized during a conversation about grace. Grace is about giving what is not deserved and expecting nothing in return. It does not make any sense to us because we are not familiar with selflessness. In fact, we are usually very skeptical and suspicious of it. I am content with not understanding grace - namely God's grace - but in that moment of passionate discussion, I continued talking into a spot where I thought I needed to give SOME kind of explanation. I was talking to a believer but orating as if I wasn't (because I believe this is good practice and often a refreshing way to relate to believers because there are some things we do not talk about, thinking they are understood, when we actually should). I quoted my brother from a discussion we had about forgivness. He does not believe that true forgiveness exists. I asked, "What would someone have to do to make you believe they have actually forgiven you?" He replied, "They would have to give me the chance to hurt them again," and I was like Serious. It's true; it's a very good and accurate statement. Therefore with the grace of God, we see that He does not ask anything in advance (like a promise to change) or in its wake (like gratitude). Aside from loving us intensely and unconditionally, what could be the motivator? (God is omniscient and omnipotent but He can still get His feelings hurt (especially by us, quite regularly).) I looked at our reaction: When we are given a second chance with a clean slate we do not say, Yes! Another chance to screw up! (I suppose some do... but I aint heard.) Instead we say, Wow, I really need to change. When an earthly parent - or even a teacher - does this, we feel like the bar has been raised, like we need to avoid disappointing them. God gives us grace because He believes we are capable of something better. How cool is it when someone who knows you well (as in good and bad) tells you they think you have potential?
As for number three, it's true. Time is one of those things you can't get back (or enough of, it seems). As Paul said in Six Degrees of Separation, "Money is the one commodity you can always get enough of." Money is a placeholder at best. When you try to put a price on things you cannot pay for you cheapen them. For example: offering your wife twenty bucks to sleep with you. [I saw a couple on television telling how this had actually taken place. The wife asked for thirty and called it a deal. I call it watered-down prostitution.] There was some James Bond movie I watched many years ago (probably one starring Sean Connery) which made me think about the idea of value. Two dudes (regular henchmen) grown greedy had decided they were going to steal some gold bars. They took the gold but got lost in the dessert and wandered around for most of the film until they crossed paths with Bond and posse (again?) and started threatening them with guns. The peeps tried handing over whatever treasure/money they had picked up but the men with guns were like, "I aint havin nunnadat! We wants yer water!" So they handed over their canteens and Bond said something cheesy about how interesting it was that people's priorities change (like this).
This reminds me of another great learning moment brought to me by Hollywood. In John Q, a boy's parents need to come up with too much money so he can have a heart transplant. We watch for a few minutes as the parents do all they can to liquidate their assets. It was sick to see how some people actually took advantage of these people, knowing where the money was going but still bartering prices down knowing the sellers were desperate. I was impacted by this. I thought this man was finding out what was important to him, belonging by belonging. I tried to put myself in his spot. There would be some things that would be easy to part with and some would be very hard or seemingly impossible to lose. I imagine looking at each thing and asking myself a question to decide what I would do with it. "Which do you want more, this or Jesus?" The answer is the same every time but I need to keep asking. ugh