Pressing on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Whenever I get a chance to visit Barnes & Noble I love to frequent the Management & Leadership/Marketing & Sales sections.  I just enjoy reading these books.  One of my favorite authors in this section is Seth Godin.  Godin writes about, “the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.”  If you’ve never read Godin, he often writes in very short, pithy paragraphs that give his books a proverbs like feeling to them.  You can pick up any of his books, open it randomly, and likely get something useful from the page.  Try it.  You’ll understand.

As effective as Godin’s writing style is in printed form it is even more so in digital form.  It has been suggested that his blog is the most popular in the world written by a single person.  I was perusing some of Godin’s older posts recently and stumbled upon a nugget of financial advice that I love.  It is succinct, to the point, and challenging; it’s counter cultural.  Godin’s sentiments are very Dave Ramseyish.  Freedom!!! Here is my favorite part of his post.

My suggestion: Go to defcon 1, and do it immediately. Shift gears to live well below your means. That means:
No restaurants
No clothes shopping
No cable TV bill
No Starbucks

It means:
Take in a tenant in your spare bedroom
Carpool to work
Skip vacation this year

Eat brown rice and beans every night for dinner. Act like you have virtually no income.
– Entire Post

A few years ago there was a story about a guy who traded a red paper clip for a house.  The true story is that it was a little more involved than that but it did happen.  From the man who pulled it off, Kyle MacDonald:

On July 12, 2005 I posted a picture of a red paperclip on my blog and asked if anyone wanted to trade something bigger or better for it.  A few days later I traded the paperclip, and after making 14 trades over the course of a year, I wound up with a house located at 503 Main Street in Kipling Saskatchewan.
~Excerpt from the One Red Paper Clip website.

That’s a cool story.  A paper clip being traded up to a house in one year’s time.  If that’s not enough check out the latest up-trade story that is currently under way, Down Under.

Starting with only an egg, we aim to ‘up-trade’ until we reach $1 Million, 100% of which will go to charity organizations.
~1egg1world.org

A one egg up-traded to $1 Million for charity by three college students in Australia.  They started in 2009 and are well on their way.  Their last trade was a 14 day African Safari with round-trip air fair to Craig Ruddy, one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists, for an original work by him (which by the way start at $35K and have sold for as high as $312K).  The next up-trade is sure to be a hefty one.  Though most have not heard of these three guys or their 1egg1world mission yet, they will.  The million dollar up-trade will happen and their story will be made know.

Source of inspiration for these three with a dream?  None other than Kyle MacDonald and his One Red Paper Clip.  It’s amazing how one outside the box idea can lead to so much.  MacDonald traded away his original red paper clip five years ago.  Still, the impact of that one trade carries on half way around the world in the lives of three Australian college students who are raising some serious cash to help others.  That’s not a cool story.  That’s an incredible story.

I love stories where people think outside of the box and are met with incredible results.  I desire this.  I want to think outside of the box.  But not for myself.  Not for a good cause.  For the Kingdom and the King’s renown.  For the one who traded everything away for me.  The down-trade of all down-trades (God becoming human and dying on the cross) has already given me the up-trade of all up-trades (true life and my humanity back for eternity).

The questions this leaves me wrestling with and that could be helpful for others to engage in:

• What is outside the box that I can do to impact lives for the Kingdom?
• Is my vision of possibilities small or limited?  If so, how do I enlarge it for seeing beyond the status quo?
• Can I leverage my energy towards something significantly larger than myself that will require others to accomplish?

What thoughts or questions are you left wrestling with?