Posted on by Lori Cartmell

What is Your “Job One”?

Sometimes we need a reminder of what we’re really here for, don’t we?

Many companies know this. Their employees can get so focussed on the little details of their tasks that they lose sight of what their main goal is.

That’s why for many years the auto manufacturer Ford put a large sign on the walls of its factories:

“Quality is Job One.”

An employee might have been helping to assemble the engine, working on the upholstery of the seats, or perfecting the paint finish on the vehicle.

But no matter what their specific task, the sign reminded the workers that their overarching goal was to produce a quality product.

Perhaps we as Christians sometimes need to be reminded what our primary function here on earth is?

Read more
Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Write This Out 100 Times

When you misbehaved in school, did your teacher make you write out lines on the blackboard a hundred times?

Maybe you recall having to write lines such as these over and over:

“I will not talk in class.”

“I will not run in the corridors.”

Or this famous blackboard gag from the TV show “The Simpsons”:

“I will not waste chalk” (while wasting chalk to write it).

Of course, our teachers made us do this as punishment, but there may have been method in their madness.

Science has found that writing things down—specifically by hand—significantly improves memory retention. When we write by hand, the information is “baked” into our neural pathways better than if we type the same information. And the more often we write a certain thing down, the more likely we are to remember it long-term.

I wonder if we can use these findings to help us remember God’s Word better?

Read more
Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Do You Abhor a Vacuum?

Aristotle said that “nature abhors a vacuum.”

So do I, frankly. Perhaps I should simply stop vacuuming? After all, who am I to argue with Aristotle?

Seriously, though, what that phrase suggests is that empty spaces are unnatural, and somehow or other nature will seek to fill them.

I encountered a dramatic example of this truism through a friend of my late father.

This friend had developed a disorder called Charles Bonnet Syndrome. Macular degeneration had left voids or blank spots in his field of vision. The brain finds these empty spaces to be disturbing, so in Charles Bonnet Syndrome it fills in the blank areas with patterns or random images from its memory bank.

The result was that my father’s friend would “see” people or animals that weren’t actually there. His wife would have to tell him that, no, there wasn’t really a stranger sitting on their couch, or a cow in their backyard. The hallucinations he experienced were just his brain attempting to paper over the upsetting voids in his visual field.

It seems that human nature abhors a vacuum, too.

We all have voids or empty spaces in our lives that we seek to fill: areas of dissatisfaction, lack of love, or absence of validation. These blank areas make us uneasy, so we try to fill them up.

The problem is that we often choose things to fill our voids that don’t truly satisfy us in the end: alcohol, sex, money, shopping, busyness, or worldly acclaim. Despite all our efforts to paper over our pain, we can still find ourselves as empty as we were before.

What’s the solution? How do we find a lasting source of love and validation?

We need to fill the empty spaces in our lives by inviting God into them.

Read more