Outliving Your Life

I received an email recently from a friend that I hadn’t heard from in over seven years. Robert was on my Halo Baseball Club Team back in the early years and he was a great guy as well as an outstanding baseball player. He could pitch, play any position, and really hit. I admired his skills and learned a lot about baseball fundamentals from him.

In his email, Robert mentioned how much he missed playing baseball and all his friends in the Halo Baseball Club. He explained that he had decided to become a Pastor and a mentor for young leaders with the Urban Youth Workers Institute and therefore was super busy on Sundays. So he had to give up baseball for a while. I really admire people that are willing to make a “life changing decision” like becoming a Pastor. And to also commit to mentoring young people is super impressive. There have been several times in my life when I thought about becoming a Pastor, but I never had the courage to act on it. I did, however, decide to take my faith to work with me every day and do my best to both serve and support my employees, customers and vendors. Plus, I also decided to start writing Monday Messages as another way to share my faith and hopefully draw people just a little closer to God with my stories.

I’m pretty sure what Robert is doing is far more productive than what I’m doing. But that’s okay because everybody is unique with different skill sets. I believe that as long as we make time to use our God given talents to serve others in whatever way we can, we are definitely being productive (and honoring God as well). So after thinking about it, I realized that it was kind of cool that Robert originally inspired me when he took time to “mentor” me in baseball… and now he is inspiring me again by the way he has given up baseball to “mentor” so many others. It totally speaks to his character… so maybe character is one of the best God given talents we can hope to have!

And that got me thinking… I’m quite a bit older than Robert so I don’t know how many more years I have left on this earth. But what I do know is this, if I can serve someone in need, or share my faith with someone who is hurting, or even just help one person in some small way, then my death will not be the end of me…  because my character will live on in the people I have touched!  

The Urban Youth Worker Institute - A national non-profit organization 

that trains & resources urban youth workers to effectively 

evangelize and disciple youth in at-risk cities throughout the US.

Reputation is what men and women think of us. 

Character is what God thinks of us.

~ Thomas Paine