Jason posts a clarifying quote from Wright’s Hebrews for Everyone.

I’ve been working at my current position for just over five years now. Every year, at about this time, the new phone books arrive. And every year we turn in our old phone books by a certain date, and then that same number of new phone books are delivered to division offices, and can be picked up by individuals. This is the way it has been done for the time I’ve been here, and, I hear, for some time before that.

But, after the email was sent out Friday annoucing the new phonebooks and explaining this procedure again, another email was sent out to everyone on campus. This time from an individual. A disgruntled one, apparently. He wrote,

Dear Facilities Management,
While my old telephone book is stacked in the division office waiting for you to deliver me a new telephone book, I will give you a call if I need to know a telephone number, and you can look it up for me. Or better yet, I’ll just keep my old telephone book, and you can keep the new one.

This morning there is a new email from the director of Facilities, saying they are going to change the method of delivery for the new phonebooks, etc., and then thanks the guy that wrote the above email (and sent it to everyone on campus) for bringing the inadequacies of the old protocol to his attention. He forgets to thank him for being a jerk, though.

I am tempted to send another email to everyone on campus explaining how I handle my two and three year old daughters when they don’t like what I tell them, and mouth off to me. And then, maybe, go on to explain that when I change after they act that way, it teaches them to keep on acting that way. I encourage bad behavior by giving in to it. So, even if what I told them to is a relatively meaningless topic, or even something that I was in error about, if they are rude or whiny or angry or anything else other than cheerful and prompt in their obedience, they still have to do what I tell them. If they do that, and then respectfully ask why I had them do what they did, and question it, then I will consider their words.

But, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. I would be curious, though, as to the number of people on campus that think the Lone Emailer is a hero versus those that recognize him for what he actually is: a disrespectful whiner.

During the past five years, I’ve been putting the mantra to a very specific test with astounding results. I hum the mantra, asking God for more real ministry, then following the nudge of the Holy Spirit, I ask a complete stranger, “How can I help you?” Many of them correct my grammar, but others just say, “Beat it creepo.” But once at the Atlanta airport, in transit between real holy ministry events, I walked up to a stunning divorcee business woman, wearing all sorts of expensive Italian accessories. I blurted out, “What can I do for you?”
“Beat it creepo,” she said.
“No, really, what can I do for you?” I said.
“I’m going to call security if you don’t leave me alone,” she said sideways.
“No, really, what can I do for you?” I said again.
“Oh, you must be one of those guys with the Jabez mantra,” she said. “Six others beat you already.” She paused. “Here’s what you can do then,” she said. My eyes lit up-it was one of those Christian sentence moments, I could tell.

She looked directly at me and said, “Be human! You’re too ethereal and ghostly. Your fingers aren’t even touching your briefcase, for Pete’s sake,” she said. “Grow up. Doesn’t the Incarnation mean anything? Life is more than passing out Christian sentences. Pure religion is to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction. Show me how to see the glory of God in the ordinary things of life; show me how to be faithful and find meaning in the quotidian; show me how to ‘eat my bread with joy and drink my wine with a merry heart’ like Solomon says. Show me how to raise children so that, from them, generations will rise up and count me blessed. Show me how to live life artfully. Show me….”

She kept shouting after me as I wandered off.

Douglas Jones, The Mantra of Jabez