The Old Steel Mill isn't coming back

The Autoworkers are on strike.  That makes Michigan an even more desolate place than it was already.

 

It doesn't matter nobody buys those American cars anymore.  And, if this keeps up we will be shipping them in from Mexico or Canada or Korea since this strike only succeeds in driving productions overseas.

 

Do they (the autoworkers) have a beef?  Sure.  But not with GM.  It's much deeper than that.  This is an old steam engine someone is trying to restart.  Not gonna happen.

 

I have a nursery business associate who keeps talking in terms of "back in the day".  I listen.  I try to help him see that day is never coming again.  He has to face what is now and move ahead in that arena.

 

His problem is he had much success in early years, in the 70's and 80's.  Then he ran into trouble.  Financially.  He can't for the life of him get the old days out of his head.  He's stuck in a time warp.  I have tried to help.  I don't think I can.  This is a trap he fell into and may never exit from.  His mindset is so lost in yesterday he can't deal with what is happening tomorrow.  For that reason he will go in circles till he goes out of business.

 

It's like the men who used to work at the steel mills on the south shore of Lake Michigan.  Go into coffee shops and you see these old men sitting around telling each other that any day now the old mills will fire back up.  That somebody needs to order a load of coke to get started.

 

They won't.  There are crooked politicians that will tell them lies for votes.  We'll stand up for you.  For what?  It's gone.  The buggy whip is out of use.

 

So it is with all kinds of careers.  I read a quote from a young man in guideposts today.  He has become a billionaire.  He's barely out of his teens.  When asked how he did it his answer was, "I went to seminars and meetings no one else wanted to go to, I met with people everyone else already discarded, I involved myself with things everyone else knew all about and were too important to attend."

 

A friend of mine often says that the key to success is drinking from fresh wells from time to time.

 

It's true. 

It's particularly true in Church Work. If all the fellowship you experience is what you have ever experienced you will stagnate, go stale and be stuck.  I know.  I have been there.  No one cares what you did in your last Church.  How you had such great success.  I have a young pastor friend who talks fondly of the old days when he was preaching to large crowds at 21 years old.  Those days are gone.  In ministry it is particularly insidious to live in yesterday.  Bill Clinton's theme song was Don't Stop.  The lyrics are apt in this context, right and even if I'm not a Clinton Fan, helpful.

 

Don't stop, thinking about tomorrow,
Don't stop, it'll soon be here,
It'll be, better than before,

Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone.

 

My friend in the nursery business needs to put behind him all the success he ever had.  It's irrelevant today.  All that matters now is the future.

 

That's not just good advice, it's biblical: 

Philippians 3:12 - 14 (NIV)
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.