Saturday, March 1, 2003
Saturday, March 1, 2003
"No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the
other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
Curious, he approached and asked what the young man was doing.
"I'm practicing for the Nobel Prize," the man replied.
"How's that?" asked the visitor.
"Well," said the young man, "one of the criteria is to be outstanding in your chosen field."
If you and I are going to be outstanding in our chosen field, we are going to have to do more than
stand around.
For example, how's your memory? Did you know that most of us do not really have poor
memories? What we have are untrained memories.
A psychologist named Ericsson and his associates at Carnegie-Mellon University have taught
college students to listen to lists of random digits and then to recite that list correctly. After 50
hours of practice with differing sets of random digits, four students were able to remember up to
20 digits after a single hearing. One student, a business major not especially talented in
mathematics, was able to remember 102 digits. The feat took him more than 400 hours of
practice.
If you met him, you would say, What a memory. No! What dedication. Success is taking what
we have and giving it our best. We can develop our memory if that is our desire. We can develop
our vocabulary. We can develop our vocational skills. All we have to have is the desire. All we
have to have is the passion.
Jesus had a devotion to life, and Jesus want us to be devoted about serving our Father in
heaven.
(Matthew 6.24
NRSV)
A man was walking through the countryside when he noticed a young fellow standing at attention
in a field. In the afternoon, the walker came back along the same path and noticed that the fellow
was still there.
Dear God, help me to always be devoted to you, and forgive me when I fail. Amen.
