Today I made what I thought was a completely relevant pop culture reference that everyone in the room should understand.  I am somewhat out of touch with the day to day production work at my office.  yes, I am that guy these days.  If I get back into pure design and detailing for a few days then I am all good.  However, if I randomly try to do production work I end up looking like a caveman.  Please don’t send the Geiko Cavemen after me claiming caveman discrimination.

After I made a few cumbersome attempts to fix something one of the other younger engineers in the room got a kick out of my “production work” and called me a caveman.  I guess I looked like I was banging on the keyboard with a club.  I got a charge out of his jab and said, “Call me Captain Caveman.” 

This comment was met with a blank stare.  Who doesn’t know Captain Caveman?  Apparently those young folks who were either not born or watching cartoons in 1980, the last year of Captain Caveman’s three year run on Saturday morning cartoons.

There have been several key bog down points for me in the book but my favorite is in a quote about three quarters of the way through the book.  “We drown ourselves in trivia and excess.”  What two extremes trivia and excess! 

The Internet has made us brilliant and stupid at the same time.  I can ask an employee for a report and in a few minutes they can have more tech memos, facts and queries on the subject than at any othertime in history.  Yet, logic often evades the user.  It must me true I got an email from a friend who knows someone…stop me if you have heard it before, you know the drill.  Trivial Pursuit was just that interesting facts with no point except winning a piece of pie and impressing friends with the depth of your useless knowledge.

Excess is the other extreme.  You can know so much that you are of no real use.  Have you ever been around someone who knew subject or studied it to a point of minutia?  It makes me laugh to be around people like this they talk for hours on a single subject and it does not matter.

I think this quote is most true about Christians.  We get caught up in various subjects or sins to a point of both trivial and excess.  Some worry about understanding concepts we can never full grasp like grace or election and never move to a point of action.  If we are going to move at the speed of life and impact the world around us we have to move in a different direction as a community of believers.  The chuch is drowning in both trivia and excess.

I have always admired our men and women in the military.  I watch movies like Saving Private Ryan and wonder if I were ever placed in that situation if courage is what would prevail.  How would I stand up in the face of life threatening events? 

 I like the John Wayne quote because it is simple and borderline fool hearted to the feint of heart.  Courage is being scared of the task ahead and deciding to act in-spite of your fear.  Why?  To prove you are a man, no.  To take on the challenge, maybe.  To correct a wrong or defend an ideal, most likely.  To protect what is right, always.

As we begin the year talking about dreaming a dream that God dreams for us, the men in my small group shared a similar story this weekend which helped me tremendously as I try to “saddle up” in the face of uncertainty.  We all share a restless spirit and look to what is next.  It seems this is a big deal since we are willing to follow this to an uncertain end if we believe it is a battle to be fought.

What is over the horizon?  What dream should we dream?  What is at the end of the tunnel?  You don’t really know unless you saddle up and face it.