Thinking outside the bowl

By Murray Smith, Senior Leader, Bridges Church

Newly spun Prime Minister Hipkins has correctly determined there is an urgent need to lift the helicopter higher and take a birdseye view of the roading system. Let us make a clear statement here. Alternative movement by rail of goods and people will never cut the mustard in this country.

Narrow gauge old age thinking, lack of electrification and poor, ageing second-hand rolling stock will never meet a modern demand.

Every government sinks huge funds into the rail system just to see it drain out of the bottom end of the infrastructure pit. That said I do have some feeling for those charged with - or possibly struggling with - making a cow out of a pig’s ear regarding the iron track.

They inherited narrow gauge. They inherited the poor topography over which the lines run. They inherited the low-speed average of freight trains at 40kph. And they combat the vociferous pressure of the two main road freight lobbying groups.

Heaven forbid we should wait for another multi-million dollar consultant’s report on the opportunity of coastal shipping to relieve the rail and road-clogging freight industry.

Message for Premier Chippy – just do it lad. Forget light rail in Auckland – the airport does not need a rail link.

Ask the people who are stranded – and will be again if you do not act promptly with leadership and courage.

New-born children and their remotely placed mums have just as much right to expect services as the truck operators and their customers.

“What’s the biggest room in the world? Answer- the room for improvement.”

That’s something I was told a long time ago. It’s helped motivate me at times when the damaging effect of other’s discouraging words have imposed limitations on my sense of identity and purpose in life.

It’s not only other’s words and attitudes that impose limitations upon us… we’re perfectly capable of accepting a lower assessment of ourselves than we should. What we agree with in life, we empower.

As a middle-born child, I overheard my Dad talking to his friend about my brother and sister and me. I loved my Dad and am grateful for his wonderful legacy and guidance in life.

But in this situation, having expounded my older brother’s and my younger sister’s skills and virtues he commented, “Well, Murray isn’t showing much promise at anything just yet.”

That profoundly impacted me. Looking back, I knew I was loved and his inadvertent words were not a critical judgement of me - at that point in time, it was true that I was just not excelling at anything much… I was ordinary.

But I didn’t want to be ordinary and something in me craved a sense of significance. I’ve learned this is not a psychological issue but a deep spiritual issue within every person.

And it is entirely valid since we were born with innate feature of how God designed us. That being so, the sense of significance we need can only ever be fulfilled through relationship with Him.

Sadly, many people’s beliefs about themselves, fall far below how God sees them and His planned destiny. I know of someone leaving to study in another city. His parents asked him to take his goldfish with him. He didn’t want it, neither did anybody else. Taking it to a nearby lake he liberated it.

The ungrateful goldfish stayed put, in spite of being in a big lake. He threw a stone to scare it into venturing further afield. Hours later he went back to find it still there, evidently conditioned to think small, by life in a bowl.

We do that. We need a revelation of our God-given purpose.

A farmer raised a young eagle he’d caught and gave it a home among his ducks, chickens and turkeys.

Five years later this beautiful bird had a four and a half metre wingspan. A visiting bird ‘expert’ told the sceptical farmer to release the eagle to be what it was created to be.

Stating the eagle would never fly, the farmer put the eagle on his roof-top shouting, “Fly eagle, stretch out your wings and fly!” It looked around, then jumped down to join the other birds feeding.

Early next morning the ‘expert’ rose, taking the eagle away to a mountain summit crowned by a golden sunrise. The eagle trembled sensing new life coming into it. Minutes scrolled by. Then stretching its wings with a loud screech, it launched itself… mounting higher and higher into the dawn sky.

You were made by God - in His likeness. Reject conditioning to think and live below His plans for you. Stretch your wings and fly.