analogies on Earning

At the core of every project of self-salvation is the staunch unwillingness to believe that God’s love and forgiveness can be unmerited. Those who would try and save themselves prefer work to rest, ef...

The creation of a white standard in the world during the age of exploration, and the white structural privilege prevalent for so long in America, led to what is often called “white privilege”. This is...

Millions of golfers know the name of Harvey Penick. His first book, Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, became a surprising best-seller, selling more than 1 million copies in 1992, quickly earning the ti...

Looking through the lens of Holy Scripture, human work must be seen first and foremost as value contribution, not economic compensation. We can have a flourishing, fruitful life even if we don’t get a...

In her engaging treatment, Teach us to Want , Jen Pollock Michel describes both the beauty and pain of seeing our own sinful nature: It is often true that once we are made to see, we don’t like w...

In India, there are street ear cleaners. Standing in line at the theater, you might be approached by such a peddler promising to give your ears a good cleaning.

Seeing that wealth is neither to be avoided nor praised but rather stewarded wisely and generously, how should we think about material wealth creation? This is an important question worthy of thoughtf...

The wonderful word master used to describe the person who is at the top of his or her craft, whatever the profession. It was a title that one could work toward and with some degree of confidence ascri...

Jesus warns against greed and seeking wealth, because ultimately, money is fiction. Gold coins? Slips of paper? Ones and zeroes in a computer? They only have value because people think they do....

All games involve score keeping. The rules of scoring in any game tell the players which achievements count; what to do in order to be a winner. Monopoly players keep score with money; football player...

It would seem that hearing is but a narrow channel pouring into the deep sea of doing. Yet the etymological dictionary taught me that the sharp distinction between hearing and doing is the result of h...

Suppose I sell you a piece of commercial property on which I am already behind in my mortgage payments. You not only pay me a fair price for the property but also pay my overdue payments. Now the prop...

What’s the difference between an employee and a partner? In one word — ownership. One of my first jobs was as a barista at this place called Coffee People. It was the anti-Starbucks of the late ’90s. ...

In navigation, the term reckoning, as in dead reckoning, is the process of calculating where you are. To do that, you have to know where you’ve been and what factors influenced how you got to where yo...

On the fifteenth of each month, Alicia has thirty dollars withdrawn from her checking account to sponsor Belyse, a beautiful, brown-eyed girl from Kenya, who then gets school and a hot meal each day. ...

Known for their luxury watches, Swiss watchmaker Patek Philippe has also become well-known for its clever advertising slogan: “You never actually own a Patek Philippe; you merely take care of it for t...

Peter Drucker suggests that we should always sustain two streams of learning and self-improvement. And though he is speaking specifically about work and career, what he says is equally applicable whet...

A productive disagreement yields fruit: the fruit of security, by removing a threat, reducing a risk, resulting in a deal, or concluding with a decision; the fruit of growth, by revealing new informat...

When Jesus warns us not to store up treasures on Earth, it’s not because wealth might be lost; it’s because wealth will always be lost. Either it leaves us while we live, or we leave it when we die. N...

We all live between two worlds. We are planted here on earth while our hope is in heaven. We are given work to do in temporary soil that, we’re told, has the potential to spring up into unending fruit...

Nick believed his purpose was to speak to audiences, to become a motivational speaker, yet he had no experience, no resources, and no invitations. He decided to begin calling schools and offering to s...

The noted English architect Sir Christopher Wren was supervising the construction of a magnificent cathedral in London. A journalist thought it would be interesting to interview some of the workers, s...

As I have worked to clarify my calling, I have learned to pay attention to my energy levels in response to different activities. If I experience a particular activity as being inordinately draining, I...

In his book The Mystery of Christ , a series of fictionalized pastoral counseling sessions (based on actual events), the Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon shares a number of helpful ways of unde...

Mercy goes beyond justice, it does not undercut it. If I forgive you the hundred dollar debt you owe me, that means I must use one hundred dollars of my own money to pay my creditors. I cannot really ...

I can lose my job; I might be released from a position. My career can come to an end when I retire from the organization I work in. But my vocation comes from God; it remains and is not in the end som...

We talk about our work all the time. It is rare that a conversation with a person we have recently met does not at some point lead to the inevitable question, What do you do? by which we mean, how do ...

We are meant to be part of the flow of abundance: to open our hands to receive what we need and share what we have with others. Jesus taught his followers to be radically generous when he said: “Sell ...

For many of us, living in excess doesn’t express itself in extremities. It doesn’t translate to tying $4,000 to balloons and releasing it into the air. It doesn’t have to amount to owning six houses (...

I heard a story about a little boy who wanted to give God an offering but had nothing to give. He sat on the floor, watching people pass by and place their offerings in large wicker baskets. How he lo...