Discouraged?

If you've listened to Dave Ramsey very much, you know he references the old Aesop fable, The Tortoise and the Hare on occasion. He often mentions how Zig Ziglar says "no matter how many times I read this story, the tortoise always wins."

It's a fitting story to use as motivation when working yourself out of debt. Running a long race at what can seem like a slow pace can often be discouraging, no matter the amount of intensity you attack with. That may be why the current imagery of Dave Ramsey's MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com is successful. The team did a good job putting it together and the simplicity and clarity is doing remarkably well.

In the spirit of full disclosure and for the sake of "big brother", I do work on the MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com team. So, don't click the image above if you don't want to feel like I am marketing to you. I'm just proud of the team.

Images of America, Biltmore Estate

If you had over $4 billion dollars and 125,000 acres, what would you do with it?

George Vanderbilt, the grandson of railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt "The Commodore", knew what he wanted to do. His father, William Henry Vanderbilt left a legacy of over $200 million dollars in 1885 when he died which is the equivalent of $4 billion today. In the 1890's George began buying land outside of Asheville, NC, that soon amounted to over 125,000 acres and expanded into 3 counties. There, he built the largest privately owned home in America called "Biltmore."

I have visited the estate on a few occasions and I'm always fascinated by the house and the Vanderbilt family's way of life. Having lived in the greater Nashville area for the last decade, I've also adopted Vanderbilt University as my SEC favorite. Combining these two interests, I'm making it a point to learn more about the Vanderbilt family. I've started with something light.

Ellen Erwin Rickman's Biltmore Estate (Images of America: North Carolina) was a fun book. Full of old pictures, each caption gave a wonderful history and glimpse of the Vanderbilt family, their values and the culture they created. It also gave good insight on the construction of the Biltmore Estate and how it took a village to run the place. The only thing it was lacking were modern day images for comparison.

If you want to learn some history and prefer books with pictures...this is it.

Pray Big, Serve Small

I was challenged a few months ago to pray bigger. I've never really thought much about about the size of my prayers, but I think there is some merit to praying bigger and serving smaller.

Image by frozenminds via Flickr

Pray Big
When people ask for prayers, how often do they request on a global scale? For example, think of the last time someone asked you to pray for an individual who was sick with cancer. Now think of the last time you prayed for a cancer cure so that everyone with cancer is healed. I'm guessing most people haven't prayed for the latter.

Are our prayers to selfish? If all people adopted a "pray big" model, what implications would it have?

Serve Small
I also wonder if there is a temptation for us to make up for our small prayers through serving big. Obviously, there are advantages to connecting with ministries that have a global impact. When we help, we want to help big. We want to see change on a large scale. We want our efforts to produce fruit at the same rate we pour ourselves into a project.

Some people have a gift to run and manage ministries that serve big, but all of us have the ability to serve small. You may only be able to serve one cancer patient, but you can pray for all cancer patients. If everyone served those in their vicinity, think of the impact it has globally.

There's nothing wrong with praying small and serving big, I just wonder if we have a good balance of both.