Posted on by Lori Cartmell · 2 Comments

Bloom Where You’re Planted?

Some say you should “bloom where you’re planted.”

You can get all manner of products printed with this slogan: T-shirts, mugs, posters, and notecards.

But is that always the best advice?

Maybe not. There’s something to be said for not staying in the same place for too long.

Your garden will tell you that if you plant the same type of vegetable in the same plot year after year, you’ll notice that the health of the plant and the yield it produces will begin to suffer. The plant will be attacked by more diseases and pests, and the nutrients in the soil will have been depleted by past crops of the same type.

The answer to this problem?

Crop rotation.

Don’t plant the same type of vegetable or crop in the same location several years running. Mix it up; plant something new in that spot.

What about in life?

Does God intend us to stay rooted to the same location for much of our lives?

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell · 2 Comments

Too Many Cooks

Chef Blair Rasmussen and colleagues, Vancouver, 2009
Photo by VancouverConvention on Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Can you have too much of a good thing?

When it comes to chocolate, I would say an unequivocal no.

What about when it comes to having assistance in the kitchen? Surely you can’t go wrong having an abundance of help when you’re cooking?

You would think not, wouldn’t you?

But there’s a limit to how many “sous-chefs” you should have.

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “too many cooks spoil the broth.” This idiom can be literally true. One person might decide the soup needs more salt, so liberally adds more. The next helper might think the soup is too salty, so dilutes it to compensate.

Some might figure the soup needs more onion; others think it’s too spicy. Each tries to correct the perceived mistakes of the others until you end up with an inedible mess.

Sometimes we need to be judicious about who we listen to.

There are some key examples in Scripture which teach us that too many “cooks” or advisors can confuse and divide us.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Need a “Stop-Loss” For Your Life?

Stock Market Correction
Photo by Rafael Matsunaga on Flickr CC BY-2.0

If you’re familiar with the stock market, you probably know what a “stop-loss” is. It’s an order whereby your shares are automatically sold if their value drops to a predetermined level. This prevents your losses from becoming even greater if share prices drop further.

It’s a handy tool to set in place when trading on the stock market. It locks in your profits or limits your losses in a down market, and helps preclude financial catastrophe.

But don’t you wish we had a “stop-loss” for real-life problems?

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