On Saturday evening, I attended a celebration service at my church. One of the church’s traditions is to gather together recount God’s faithfulness through the year and prepare for the next. There is a sense of expectation as well as of praise. As part of the praise and recounting of God’s faithfulness, the pastor would call upon members of the congregation to take the floor and spontaneously share their stories. Different people would share their stories, how God has led them to the community and what the community has meant to them and their families. There are stories of transformation, of reconciliation, of God working in people’s lives, often in radical ways. In the end, it is always about God showing up unexpectantly in and through the lives of people and transforming the lives and faith of people.

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A while ago, I raised some questions about what it means to first seek the Kingdom of God and especially what it means when it says “all these things will be given to you.” Recently I was involved in a converstaion between two of my daughters around the dining table.

“Sometimes I think God is so selfish!”

This is Daughter #3 who is usually quiet, preferring to read than to talk. She shrugged her shoulders.

“I mean, He tells us to love Him and obey Him. It seems that He only cares about Himself. With God, everything seems to be about Him only. Isn’t that selfishness?”

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In a previous post, I suggested that companies like Walmart could be acting unethically in their pursuit of the almighty bottom-line-dollar-profit margins. Is it always wrong to strive for profit? Much earlier on, I commented briefly on the two main theories of the corporation.

One champions the drive towards profitability. In fact, according to Milton Friedman, there is no other obligation for the corporation but to make money for its owners (shareholders). But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have any social agenda, as long as it is only a means to increase its profitability. If acting in a humanitarian or charitable manner allows it to increase its profile in the community so as to win more business ultimately, it is fulfilling its role as a wealth-making machine for its shareholders

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The other day I engaged in a short discussion with someone at work. I had just closed a sale - one that I really wouldn’t have done ordinarily, because the customer had driven a very hard bargain. She showed me a quote from a competitor with a price that was very close to our cost. We normally would not go after such business, but this time my boss and I decided that we could win that business because (1) we were having a few good runs the past quarter and could afford to win a few businesses close to our profit margins, (2) every new business we win from this particular competitor was one less they would otherwise win. We were hoping that by winning business off this particularly competitor, we were hoping to either drive them out of the marketplace or to reevaluate their cut-price tactics. Ironically we had to stoop to their level and low-ball them in the process, something that I did not particularly enjoy. Finally, (3) the vendor was offering extra incentives for each new business won that month by way of rebates and marketing credits. We decided that the sacrifice of profit margins to gain vendor favors was well worth it.

My friend and I were discussing the ethics of winning business via cost-cutting tactics. I was voicing my frustration with the affair as I did not believe that this was the right way to form business relationships, neither from the customer nor from the supplier perspective. The customer loses even though temporarily they gain tremendous savings in their initial investment. However, as it turned out, they were expecting such deep discounts in the subsequent services, and when I refused they decided to take their business elsewhere. They have lost the opportunity to work with our consultants, who are some of the best in the business. I did not mind losing them in the end, because I really could not sustain cutting my prices just in order to retain them as a customer. I believe business is a value exchange, and in this case, I really thought that the customer had not appreciated the value they were receiving from us.

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SmartChristian called it a “hell of a conversation.” Others are struck by the uncomfortably intimate way in which I had framed it. Over the past few days, I have had a few more hell-ish thoughts. And today, I had still more…

While sitting and listening to Brennan Manning’s passionate declaration and affirmation of the incredibly incomprehensibly vastness of God’s love for us all, I was overwhlemed by the fact that while we run around trying to get ourselves better for God to love us, but fall inexcusably short, He loves us nonetheless. While we worry that we don’t have the right pedigree, the right orthodoxy, the right charity, the right personality, the right spirituality, God says to us, “Be still my child, and let me love you.”

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In previous posts, I have reflected on the real purpose of prayer, and have asked about the efficacy of prayer when we are deeply enmeshed in our circumstances, as well as wondered about the propriety of asking God, through prayer, to intervene in our daily lives. Over the years, I have come to realize that prayer engages the heart, soul and mind more than it does things around us. While we often like to ask God to remove situations from us, or remove us from situations, God is more interested in dealing with the “us” or the individuals who are going through the situations, the growth of that person and how that person is relating to Him.

Of all the reasons why we engage in prayer and why prayer is important to those of us who follow Christ, one of the most powerfully blessed reasons is what I like to call the fellowship of prayer. It is the bond that is created when you pray for someone and that person senses the support and sustenance that comes from not only the uplifting of the Holy Spirit but also the fellowship of having been engaged in that prayer with you.

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I opened my big fat mouth! I told my boss I blog! Interestingly, this boss of mine has become a good friend in just a matter of about three months. In my previous job, my boss was really from the other side of town if you know what I mean. Those that have followed a little of my story in the past several months might have a clue. Let’s just say that the difference between my current boss and my previous boss is like the difference between heavenly bliss and hellish terror!

Still, that doesn’t excuse me from my blabbermouth. I haven’t really blogged about my work lately as things at work have really normalized. This job is really something that is nearly picture perfect although not without its usual challenges and it still has quite a few things about the company and my team mates that I have to learn to get used to.

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While conversing with a couple of other bloggers on hell and what it means for us today in terms of our spiritual life and in our engagement with others in conversation about their spiritual lives, I found myself asking questions that I have either not bothered to seek answers for, or have simply assumed I knew the answers. Som of the questions I have asked for the longest time, and some of them got rephrased along the way, but certainly these questions came flooding back the past few days. I now realize that I really don’t know the answers to many of these questions, or if I think I do, I am no longer sure if they are the right ones.

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This is the second installment of searching for whatever you are looking for, and finding this blog instead. Today, someone was looking for biography of poor philosophers. HOw did they know I am a poor philosopher? Years ago, when I first graduated with a philosophy degree, I applied for an American Express card. They declined me. The reason? Major area of studies. I guess I am a poor philosopher also because I don’t make any money in philosophy, unless you count the fact that I do my work very thoughtfully. Oh, that reminds me, I need to get my thesis completed soon!

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Recently I was engaged in a discussion with Abednego and Jeremy Pierce over at Parableman’s blog and also here about the topic of hell.

Hell is something people might like to use in daily speech, but is probably a concept that sometimes makes both the religious and the non-religious somewhat uncomfortable. I wonder if this might be because for a long time it has seen as a way to keep folks in the straight and narrow, a kind of scare tactic to keep people from misbehaving. It might not be too dissimilar to the message that Santa might not bring you your present if you had been a bad boy during the year

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I continued some more work on my blog today that I started a couple of weeks ago, adding a couple of nice plugins, and adding the blogrolls to the third column. It does make it an excessively long column, however, because this is the column that is hidden from view when a post is selected, it seems to be the column to put the blogrolls. I do have quite long blogrolls, both my public subscriptions from Bloglines and a couple of Aggregators that I belong to. I am also trying to find out how to change these blogrolls to expanding lists so that they do not all show up when the blog loads up, thereby hopefully speeding up the loading of the blog.

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I was moved when I watched the movie, so it caught my eye immediately when I saw this: Hope Rwanda - 100 days of hope. You might be interested to be involved in this yourself, and encourage your church to also get involved. Check it out.