Investment

    I Was having lunch with friends today and we began to talk about investment. It's funny how certain words will etch into my heart and I become passionate about their meaning. Investment is one of those words that has deep meaning and strikes a passion in me because I believe deeply of its importance, and somehow knew I'd write about it.

I decided to look up its definition. This is what it said:

     A. To spend or devote for future advantage or benefit: invested much time and energy in getting a good education.

     B.To devote morally or psychologically, as to a purpose; commit: "Men of our generation are invested in what they do, women in what we are" (Shana Alexander).

C.  To endow with authority or power: The Constitution invests Congress with the power to make laws.

D. To install in office with ceremony: invest a new emperor.

E. To provide with an enveloping or pervasive quality: "A charm invests a face / Imperfectly beheld" (Emily Dickinson).

To invest, without question is to give something of yourself. It may be money, it may be time. It may be as simple as a season, or a life long thing. It could be sowing truth or encouragement. When saying the word, it's often thought of as investment of money and to gain something back in return, but upon any kind of investment, it's a very true reality that what is gained of an investment may never be actually seen by the investor....but instead others may gain from such an investment.

I can think of many times in and throughout my life where people have chosen to invest in me.  When they did that, they may or may not have been the beneficiary of the results of that investment.  I can think of a teacher, Mr. Gerlach, that I had in high school who saw me headed down a wrong path. He took time to pull me aside and call me out, and also recognized my athletic ability and invested time in redirecting me to use that ability and keep me running in the right direction with encouragement, truth and love. He, to my knowledge, did not benefit at all from this investment, except knowing in his heart that it was the right thing to do. However, this mans time of investing in me not only changed my WHOLE life, but effected all those I'd come across  in my future as a player, teacher, and coach, as well as my own children's lives.  

I can also name countless amount of others who have invested time into me and who may or may not have been the beneficiary of those results, but I thank God they chose to do so.

We live so much in a "microwave" society. We often want to see results quickly and or want something for nothing.

I know as a teacher that if I have a problem student, I need to invest more time into them. More often times than not, I see the results of this investment. My goal is two fold....yes I'd like to have less classroom difficulties with them, but I'd also, in the long run, like to see it benefit themselves and others down the road. It's about relationship.  In the inner city school I teach, I can't expect a kid, whose brought up in a world of learning to trust no one, to trust me if I don't work on that relationship. It takes time, it takes follow through, it takes doing what I said I would do. It takes commitment but more than that it takes compassion.  You want to see someone's life change, invest in it. Don't do it out of selfishness but out of selflessness. Not because you may benefit but because the future might.

So much of the time people don't want to take the time, but you can't expect to help build God's kingdom if your not willing to look past the walls of your own. Im so glad that God decided to invest His Son so that I could be set free, aren't you?