Built to Last

The rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock (Matthew 7:25).

How do you feel when a brand new purchase breaks immediately upon using it?  It wasn’t built to last!  Greg Asimakoupoulos writes about some homes that were built to last:

On October 19, 2010, a test was conducted at the Institute for Business and Home Safety in Richburg, South Carolina. Researchers constructed two 1,300-square-foot houses inside a $40 million laboratory and then observed how a simulated hurricane would impact the homes.  The first home was built according to conventional standards. The second home included reinforcement straps that connected every level of the building, from the foundation all the way to the roof. Then the researchers turned on giant fans, creating gusts of wind up to 110 miles per hour (equal to a category 3 hurricane). In the first two experiments, which lasted under ten minutes, both homes survived the intense winds. But when they tried a third experiment, turning on the fans for more than ten minutes, the conventional home began to shake and then collapsed. In contrast, the home with the floors and roof reinforced to the foundation sustained only cosmetic damage.

Are you built to last?  Jesus calls upon us to build our lives on the firm foundation of His life.  Will you base your life on obedience to His Word?  The storms will come, but they will leave you untouched and undamaged.

One Thing

This one thing I do . . . (Phil. 3:13).

How are you at multitasking?  Can you do many things well at the same time?  A Stanford News Service article focused on the price many are paying in the area of focus when they involve themselves in so many activities at the same time.  The article entitled, “Media Multitaskers Pay Mental Price,” chronicles how many multitaskers are suffering from impaired performance.  They are losing their ability to focus as their cognitive abilities become overloaded.  The article begins, “Attention, multitaskers (if you can pay attention, that is): Your brain may be in trouble.”   The article continues:

 The researchers originally set out to discover what gave multitaskers their special focus; instead, they were surprised to discover that in many ways multitasking impairs performance. So while many people think they're effective at juggling multiple tasks, they're actually pretty lousy at it.  For instance, heavy multitaskers are suckers for distraction and for irrelevancy. According to one of the researchers, "Everything distracts them." Multitaskers were also more unorganized in their ability to keep and retrieve information. They were even worse at the main thing that defines multitasking: switching from one task to the next. Heavy multitaskers underperformed in almost every area of the study.

 

Paul knew the power of focus, of doing one thing well.  He knew that by doing less, one can do more.  Are you losing your focus by trying to do too much?  Why not simplify?

Mountain Mover

Not lagging in diligence (Romans 12:11, NKJV).

What would you do with an insurmountable obstacle?  A man from India did what he could with what he had.  Van Morris writes,

When a mountain is in your way what do you do? Just ask Ramchandra Das, 53, who lives in Bihar, India. In order to access nearby fields for food and work, Das and his fellow villagers had to take a 4.3-mile trek around a mountain. Fed up with the obstacle, Das did something about it. With just a hammer and chisel, he cut a 33-foot-long, 13-foot-wide tunnel through a narrow area of the mountain. It took Das fourteen years to complete the task. 

Would you stay at a task for fourteen years?  Das did what he could with what he had.  His perseverance has not only benefitted his family, it has benefitted the villagers, as well. This mountain mover sweat, chiseled, and dug for others for almost a decade and half.  Will we be diligent for others?