The Ladder

by Dr. Guy Sayles

Unless you’re a painter, roofer, or fire-fighter, you’re probably not on a ladder very often.  From time to time, you use a step stool to reach the top shelf of a tall cabinet or a step-ladder to change a light bulb. A couple of times of year, you get out the extension ladder and clean out the gutters; but, most of the time, the ladder stays in the garage and you keep your feet on the ground.

But, when it comes to ladders of ambition and achievement, many of us are climbing all the time.  There are always more rungs above us.  Who can count the steps between mail room clerk and CEO, graduate assistant and Distinguished Professor in an Endowed Chair, second lieutenant and general officer, between apprentice, journeyman and master?  I know it doesn’t have to be this way, but for a lot of us it is: our dreams are of moving up: from the windowless office on the first floor to the sunlit corner office on the top floor.  Success for most of us means going higher, moving to the top.  So there’s always more climbing to do and always people just behind and beneath us, climbing faster and faster, threatening to pass us up or knock us off the rung we’re on.

Some of us become so obsessed with climbing the ladder that we lose track of other things which actually matter more than the ladder: things like love, authenticity, and integrity; like health, happiness, and compassion; like family, friends, and God, for instance.  We can get into a frame of heart and mind which convinces us that the ladder is what matters—and no room on it anything other than our own ambitions.  But, because we want to think of ourselves as good people, we tell ourselves that we haven’t left those other thing and other people behind permanently.  We make a kind of bargain with our conscience: “Leave me alone for now, and I’ll get back to you later.  The ladder now; the soft stuff, the heart stuff, after we have more time, more money, and more security.”

Then, something happens.  Someone close to us gets sick or has an accident.  Our spouse walks out.  One of our kids gets in trouble, real trouble, the kind of trouble we can’t fix by writing a check or hiring an outside helper.

Or, to get ahead, we cut corners, bend rules, and subtly stab coworkers in the back; then, one day, for some reason, we catch our own eyes in the mirror and don’t like the person looking back at us.

Or, depression sets in, or we start feeling a tightness in our chest, or we can’t sleep.

Something happens.  And the awareness crashes in on us that we’ve been climbing a ladder not worth climbing.  Remember the truism offered by business guru Stephen R. Covey: “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”

We discover what William Butler Yeats described in his poem “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”:

. . . Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

Maybe you know what it’s like for the ladder of your dreams to go away and, then, to lie down, depleted and defeated, in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.  A time like that can be a gift if we view it as invitation to clarify what truly matters, to integrate faith and ambition in a way that faith is in charge, and to renew our awareness that success without love isn’t success at all.

Guy Sayles is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Asheville. This article originally appeared on his blog, From the Intersection.

The Power of Half and Teenagers

by Rev. Felicia Fox

One of the reasons I love my job is I get to see youth and children make a real difference in the world. They really do have a way of seeing past all of the surface level issues that seem to distract us adults. Here’s an example I found this week of a teenager who saw a need and came up with a pretty simple answer that transformed her family’s life.


One day a father was driving his fourteen year old daughter, Hannah through the streets of downtown Atlanta. Hannah noticed a homeless man with a sign asking for food. On the other side was a mercedes benz. The girl had a great idea. If the man in the mercedes had a less expensive car the homeless man could use some of that money to have a meal. It was a brilliant and simple idea. Over the next few weeks Hannah kept bringing the idea up with her family. One night her aggravated mother asked if she was suggesting they should sell their house and give away all their nice things. That’s exactly what Hannah wanted. That’s exactly what the family did. They sold their 1.5 million dollar home and brought one half the size. They donated all the things they no longer needed to charity. The money from their home when to fund projects in African villages. There are now villages in Africa that have medical clinics and schools thanks to Hannah and her family. This story was the inspiration for her book, The Power of Half.

Isn’t it just like a teenager to see a need and see a solution that no adult would ever think of? It seems pretty simple. If you have an extra car you don’t need, give it to somebody who needs it. If you have extra food, feed a hunger person. It is so simple but so hard for us adults to do. We have a way of finding reasons to keep all of our stuff. We often hide the motivation behind our real reasons by saying we are just being responsible. We might need those things one day. However, most of those reasons come back to our own selfishness and our lack of faith.

Jesus summed up the idea this way, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19 – 21)

This Sunday I’ll be sharing Hannah’s story with our youth during FLASH. We’ll be taking a hard look at our own lives and thinking about where our treasure really lies. I invite you to do the same. After all, none of us really own anything. It is all suppose to belong to God.

Felicia Fox is the Minister of Youth and Children at First Baptist Church of Mount Olive, NC. This article originally appeared on her blog.

Live Simply That Others May Simply Live!

by Dr. Dennis Herman

It’s tomato season again. This year I have again fought drought and deer to have a few tomatoes to harvest. My tomato plants are, again this year, in my front yard. It’s the only sunny spot in my yard and I am convinced that it is more important that I grow some food, no matter what the neighbor’s say about “Dr. Herman’s front yard, overgrown veggie patch.”

Why fill the yard with vegetables rather than petunias? For one, I want to remember where my food comes from. And I want all the kids on my street to see that food actually grows on plants and just doesn’t “appear” in the produce department. I am hopeful that the kids on my street (unlike the young clerk at the supermarket where I shop) will someday know the difference between a tomato and a turnip.

I am defying my professional yard “fertilizers” and going to a natural lawn care service. I am attempting to eat less meat because the way our meats are raised and processed tend to, well, turn my stomach. I don’t like the fact that poultry cannot breathe or even walk where they are raised, or that beef is injected with any number of hormones and antibiotics, or pork is...well, you get the picture.

No, I’m not a rabid animal “rights” person, or a tree-hugging environmentalist, or a fanatic about every health fad that comes along. But I am seriously trying to understand “Christian stewardship” as being about more than giving to the Church. It’s about how we treat our earth, our animals, our humans, and our food and water sources.

I believe some resources of our earth are limited and others, while limited, are replenishable. I believe there may just be enough food and resources for all of us if some of us don’t mess it up or use it up! And I believe that good stewardship calls me to live simply that others may live.

This is a counter-cultural idea and you may not agree. But if you can’t get any tomatoes or basil, come by my house. I don’t mind sharing.

Dennis Herman is the senior Pastor of Greystone Baptist Church in Raleigh, NC. He will be retiring next week. This article originally appeared in the church newsletter, Greystone Today.