Empty Arrival
Theme of the Week: Ambition
Eugene Peterson
Monday, August 23, 2004
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Key Bible Verse: You are jealous for what others have … so you fight and quarrel to take it away from them (James 4:2). Bonus Reading:Luke 20:45—47
Months of struggle, strategy, and sacrifice paid off in a landslide victory for President Richard Nixon in 1972. The picture Charles Colson draws in Born Again contains three figures on election night: chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, arrogant and sullen; Nixon, restlessly gulping scotch; and Colson, feeling deflated, "a deadness inside me." Three men at the power pinnacle of the world, and not a single note of joy discernible in the room.
"If someone had peered in on us from some peephole in the ceiling of the President's office, what a curious sight it would have been: a victorious President, grumbling over words he'd grudgingly say to his fallen foe; his chief of staff surly and snarling; and the architect of his political strategy sitting in numbed stupor."
Colson writes, "Being part of electing a President was the fondest ambition of my life. For three years I'd committed every ounce of energy to Richard Nixon's cause. Nothing else mattered. We had no time together as a family, no social life, no vacations." The experience isn't uncommon. We work hard for something, get it, then find it thoroughly boring.
—Eugene Peterson in A Long Obedience in the Same Direction
My Response: What's my main goal? Will achieving it really bring me fulfillment?
Adapted from A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (InterVarsity, 1980) by permission.
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Lord, Help me to align my ambition with Your purposes so that You can harness it for Your glory.
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