Scripture
Plant your seed in the morning and keep busy all afternoon, for you don’t know if profit will come from one activity or another—or maybe both.
~Ecclesiastes 11:6, NLT
Quote
Doing nothing is not nothing; it is something that produces nothing.
~Annymous
Man by nature is a control freak and some are more persistent than others. We take pride in our ability to make things happen but the sober reality is: most things are out of our control. Solomon mentions the rain: can you make it rain? We have no control over wind or rain. The farmer who waits for perfect weather will never plant. What control do we have over natural events? When a storm blows a tree down in the woods, the tree goes which ever way the wind is blowing but where ever it falls, that’s where it lays until it rots. We do not understand the path of the wind or how a baby is conceived in the womb, these are miraculous things that God does and they are completely out of our control. We can accept this truth and make what ever adjustments need to be made or we can live a frustrated, fearful and fretful life.
So Solomons advice is to take the calculated risk, plant your seed whether the conditions are perfect or not. No one knows when the rain is coming or if the crop will make. Invest wisely in more than one area. Solomon believed in making investments abroad, over seas and that is also good advice. Just as one business investment could go sour, an entire nation could default but if you are invested in more than one nations, you will not lose everything. If you diversify, one investment will cover or offset the other. In other words, Solomon did not put all of his eggs in one basket. I knew a man some years ago who believed in banks but not investments. He wanted to keep his money safe and he was afraid to invest. He had the faulty notion that because the banks were backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation [Government] that they were solvent. What do banks and the IRS have in common? Both are government sanctioned thieves. Both banks and insurance companies capitalize on our fears. Some people live by fear and they are afraid to take any risk. Solomon advice: take some healthy risk. Don’t allow fear to govern your life. Solomon is not encouraging foolish risk; he is not talking about throwing money in the wind but he is encouraging us to make wise investments based on calculated risk. Jesus taught us that it is bad stewardship to take God’s resources out of circulation.
- As I think about Solomon’s advice, I think back about my Daddy’s generation. My daddy bought a 40 acre farm in the 1940’s for $2,400.00. June Dad and Uncle bought 500 acres just North of Elk River in the 1960’s for less than $100 per acre. When I was in college, I meet a man several years older than myself who bought 200 acres near Pulaski, Tennessee for $230 per acre. He kept it for less than 10 years, sold the timber and then sold the land for much more than $230 an acre. So, I buy a lot on Vaughn Bride road that adjoins the TVA land on Flint Creek. I didn’t think I was giving too much for it but Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac happened a year or so afterwards. I have had the land for 15 years and its value is less today than it was before Freddie Mac. I told someone the other day, “I have a lot on Wheeler Lake, it just 15 miles up Flint Creek.” Same water! You want a lot on Wheeler Lake, see Holly Reeves the real estate tycoon. She will give you a sweet deal. She is willing for me to take a loss so long as she get her commission. Imagine that!
- June got a Weed Eater for her Mother’s Day. I think it was around $200 and low and behold if my son did not go out and buy is sweet wife a new zero radius Gravely mower. I can’t win for losing.
- I’m going to post this early because my computer out here in the EASTERN GATE MINISTRIES building is much better than the one in the house. I will proof it later. If you are one of the early birds like Big Mama, just suffer through the msitakes. Did you catch that?