A few weeks ago I accidentally deleted over a thousand files from my computer. Thankfully I recovered them all, but they came back unsorted. All the business files were mixed with the PathLight files or the Westmont files or the family files, for instance.
I’ve been slowly putting them in the appropriate folders. It’s easier than it sounds because the titles usually offer clarity. I’m pretty sure “Goble Properties Depreciation Schedule March 2017” doesn’t go in the travel plans folder.
But a few need to be opened and read first. This has, oddly, been fun. It’s like treasures of the past coming back to entertain me.
Today I opened a document simply titled “leadership” that was created ten years ago. It was a memo I’d written for a friend who was working on a book about Esther. She had asked me to review an early draft and offer input.
The memo I created made me shake my head in wonder as I read through it this afternoon. So much of it ended up in my books!
And some was downright prophetic. I wrote, “…we’ve often defined leadership in ways that is really only attractive to the hyper competitive. Look, I admire Bill Hybels and all that he has done. But is there any more competitive person within the contemporary Church? Probably not. Is that healthy? No, it’s not a healthy model for the overall leadership needs of the Church. It leads to insularity and lack of accountability, which easily devolves into abuse.”
Ahem. Sadly true.
But there were happier insights too. Influenced by the premise of my friends book, I equated the Esther story to social justice, pointing out that Mordecai was asking Esther to take the message of the oppressed and translate it for the people of power. There is a message here of connecting the poor with the wealthy.
I wrote, “The poor often live with the affliction of despair (a lack of hope). The rich often live with the affliction of self-indulgence (a lack of faith). The poor can learn a lot from the rich about hope; the rich can learn a lot from the poor about faith. Both, of course, can teach each other a lot about love.”
This idea worked itself into a lot of my writing.
People who journal tell me there is joy in reading early entries. I better understand that now.