October 28, 2020
Leadership Notes
Since I'm not watching football this year, I have more time to read. I like historic nonfiction. I recently finished "Empire of the Summer Moon - Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History." I could not more highly recommend this book.
In light of where we find ourselves, culturally, I found these summaries of Quanah Parker's outlook so uplifting:
Quanah made a point of being cheerful, helpful, and cooperative. That was his nature anyway. He was gregarious, the product of an intensely communal society where consensus-building was the most valued political skill and the particular skill that he possessed in abundance…Quanah knew as well as anyone what life on the reservation was like. But there is no reason to doubt his hope or his optimism. His entire career was based on his peculiarly sunny view of the future. He always genuinely believed things would get better, if he could only convince his people to change their old ways…What Quanah had that the rest of his tribe in the later years did not was that most American of human traits: boundless optimism. Quanah never looked back, an astonishing feat of will for someone who had lived in such untrammeled freedom on the open plains, and who had endured such a shattering transformation. In hard times he looked resolutely forward toward something better.
Who would want to have any other kind of attitude? We are neither stuck in our past, nor currently hobbled by things people did before us. Day always breaks after darkness falls. Amen?
Pushing back against the spirit of our times, I love what Charles H. Spurgeon once said: "There are some who do little else but complain. They complain of the times, of the weather, of the government, of their families, of their trade; if, for once, they would complain of themselves, they might have a more deserving subject for fault-finding." Another amen?
Final thought, from Todd Friel, which ties this all together and firmly sets us in Christ for the rest of the week, until we worship together again this coming Lord's Day:
The truth of God's love should humble you, lift you up, and allow you to sing, "Amazing love, how can it be, that You, my God, should die for me?"
With Much Love and Affection,
Richard