May 3, 2022 – David and Goliath  

Outsourcing  

“But Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”  Then the Lord said to him, “Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?   Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.”  But he said, “O my Lord, please send someone else.”  Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “What of your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he can speak fluently; even now he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you his heart will be glad.   You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do.  He indeed shall speak for you to the people; he shall serve as a mouth for you, and you shall serve as God for him.”  Exodus 4:10-16  

  

“The Swedish furniture retailer IKEA got its start….founded by Ingvar Kamprad.  His great innovation was to realize that much of the cost of furniture was tied up in its assembly.  So he sold furniture that hadn’t yet been assembled, shipped it cheaply in flat boxes, and undersold all his competitors.  In the mid 1950’s he ran into trouble.  Swedish furniture manufacturers launched a boycott of IKEA.  They were angry at his low prices, and they stopped filling his orders.  IKEA faced ruin.  Desperate for a solution, Kamprad looked south and realized just across the Baltic Sea….was Poland, a country with much cheaper labor and plenty of wood.  That’s Kamprad’s openness: few companies were outsourcing like that in the early 1960’s.  Poland in the 1960’s was a mess.  It was a Communist country.  It had none of the infrastructure or machinery or trained work-force…But Kamprad pulled it off.  What is the most striking fact about Kamprad’s decision?  It’s the year he went to Poland: 1961.  The Berlin Wall was going up.  The Cold War was at its peak.  To be creative (shipping furniture flat and outsourcing in the face of a boycott), and conscientious (to build a first-class manufacturing operation in an economic backwater) and have the strength of mind to defy the Cold War?  That’s rare.”  (David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell, p. 117-118)  

Outsourcing  

Outsourcing is not just the invention of the mid-20^th century.  G-d has been outsourcing since the beginning of creation. Think about it. When the people were living sinful lives, G-d turned to Noah to build the ark and start anew. When G-d wanted to free the Israelites, G-d turned to Moses to tell him he was going to be the one to free the people from the oppression of the Egyptians. Now, Moses was not so keen to the idea. In fact, Moses comes up with five specific reasons why he should not be the one. That takes a lot of courage to tell G-d you are not the right person to go and do what G-d asks you to do – especially when G-d is speaking to you from a burning bush.  Anyway, Moses tells G-d, among other things, that he is a nobody, so why would the people listen to him. And besides, he does not speak well in front of crowds, so wouldn’t it be better to send someone else. So G-d decides he will outsource the speaking part of the job to, “your brother Aaron the Levite… I know that he can speak fluently…”  And of course the rest is Israelite history.    

  

G-d continues to need people to help with the work of G-d, so G-d will continue to outsource the work needed to be done. That is what is at the heart of the phrase “G-d’s Work, Our Hands”. There is plenty of work to be done, and G-d will continually look to us as possible people to outsource His work.  And that’s the way it should be.  

Let us pray,

Lord Jesus, we have seen your works and we know that they are all good. Give me the courage to continue your work today and every day. Amen.

Pastor Dave  

  

  

May 2, 2022 — David and Goliath  

Desirable Difficulties  

 “But Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid, for am I in God’s place? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.  So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.” In this way he reassured them, speaking kindly to them.”  Genesis 50:19-21  

 “I want to explore the idea that there are such things as “desirable difficulties”.  That concept was conceived by Robert Bjork and Elizabeth Bjork, two psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles…For example, can Dyslexia turn out to be a desirable difficulty?  It is hard to believe that it can, given how many people struggle with the disorder throughout their lives—except for a strange fact.  An extraordinarily high number of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic.” (David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell, p. 102, 106)  

 “The idea of desirable difficulty suggests that not all difficulties are negative.  Too often, we make the…mistake…and jump to the conclusion that there is only one kind of response to something terrible and traumatic.  There isn’t.  There are two….  

 Your father can commit suicide and you can suffer from a childhood so unspeakable that you push it to the furthest corners of your memory—and still some good can end up coming from that.” (David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell, p. 134, 135, 143)  

 Desirable Difficulties  

Consider the following puzzle:  

  A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total.  The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.  How much does the ball cost?    

 What is your first intuition about the answer?  Many people say the ball must cost $0.10 (ten cents).  That can’t be right, can it?  Think about it – the bat is to cost $1.00 more than the ball.  If the ball costs ten cents, and the bat costs one dollar more, it would cost $1.10…leaving the total to be $1.20.  And that is wrong – which means the ball costs five cents ($0.05 plus $1.05 = $1.10)  

  

This question is part of a three-question intelligence test – the shortest IQ test in the world. It’s called the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT). It is touted by its creator to be just as useful as IQ tests with hundreds of questions.  How difficult is the test? MIT students average 2.18 correct answers out of three. Carnegie Mellon University students averaged 1.51 correct answers out of three.  These three questions are hard because they appear to be easy. So, the easiest way to increase the scores on this test is to make it more difficult, a little bit harder.  Let me explain.  

So, someone gave the test again to some students, but printed the question in a font and gray scale that made it almost impossible to read. When given to MIT students in this more difficult font and gray scale, their scores went up to an average of 2.45 correct answers out of three. The difficult font made the students slow down, read the question several times – in other words, they had to work hard to read the question, and thus think a little bit harder. But the difficulty turned out to be desirable.    

  

We do not want to create difficult situations for ourselves, but we may just find out that the difficulties we face in life may often have desirable effects on us in the years to come. If we have a reading disability, or face the loss of a parent at an early age, we may have learned to deal with life’s difficulties and challenges differently – because we have to work just a little harder to get on with life. 

Although I do not want to claim that I know the secret to life, one of the benefits of life is take each experience, good or bad, and learn something from it. We can learn a lot about ourselves and our relationship with Jesus in how we endure life, good or bad, and how those experiences point us to a stronger relationship with all people. 

Let us pray,

Lord Christ, we do not like difficulties and struggles. And yet we learn so much about ourselves when we are challenged. In the struggles I face today and this week, help me to see in them opportunities to learn more about my life and my faith. Amen.

Pastor Dave