Life Talk with Craig Lounsbrough

Crafting the New

Birthing a New Beginning

She was born into an emerging America in 1890.  Through the ninety-five years of life that stood in front of her she would watch an Industrial Revolution unfold, Henry Ford roll out the Model T, and Edison light the world.  She would read the headlines of dough boys marching off to fight a Kaiser in what was originally called the ‘Great War’.  Some twenty-four years later she would watch history repeat itself as millions of GI’s marched off in similar fashion to fight a dictator in something called World War II.  In-between it all, she would face the economic depravity and emotional ravages of a devastating depression within which her husband would abandon the family and summarily vanish.  She was left to support three children on a meager income of scant dollars earned in the hot kitchen of a small diner.

She never drove a car.  She lived out most of her life on pocket change, making what seemed impossible possible.  The furniture in her meager home was old, lending it the enchanting aroma of another era long vanished.  It all was tenderly cared for in a manner that lent her home an indescribable, but wonderfully simple charm.  The few appointments in her small home were tidy, clean, and above all cherished.  She saw herself as marvelously blessed in the midst of manifold need, for Granny understood that ‘need’ was more an issue of attitude than a matter of circumstance.  And I was privileged to be touched by this solitary life until her passing in 1985.

For over ten years, every month Granny would tease ten dollars out of her meager collection of dimes and dollars.  And she would send it off to a young Hispanic girl whose father had abandoned her, and whose mother had placed her in an orphanage and summarily walked away.  All Granny had was a single photo of a tattered little girl standing in front of a weathered hut.  It sat in a slight frame on her tiny buffet.  At the feet of the photo there laid a handful of yellowed letters that Granny had received from this little girl over that most precious decade. 

Some years after Granny had passed, another letter came.  In it were several photos bearing the striking image of a young Hispanic woman in professional attire standing in a small but simple office setting.  On the back of one photo in stuttering script it said, “Thank you for my new life.”  My grandmother didn’t live long enough to see the results of her sacrifices.  However, while real sacrifice is committed to the result, it relishes the effort.  Granny relished the effort and birthed something ‘new’ into the life of a young woman.

We Are the ‘New’

Each of us possess ample resources to be the ‘new’ in the life of another.  It is not the execution of some strategy as we might think, or the happenstance of life that births something ‘new’.  It is not about some level of tenacious persistence, or the right choices made at the right time.  These things and many more can bring something ‘new’ to our lives and the lives of those around us.

But it is the raw power of that single human being stepping up and stepping into the life of another that can bring something ‘new’ in ways that nothing else ever can or ever will.  It is the energy of our humanity shared.  It is the hope that is released in the touch of another.  It is the voice of another that calls out when all other voices have long fallen silent.

It is an investment that may cost us much, yet it is an expenditure that will cost us much more if we refuse it.  It is pressing against the giant of greed and intentionally raising the eyes of our hearts past our own circumstances to focus on the circumstances of another.  It is a passion that unleashes everything away from us so that it can be drawn into everyone around us.  And it is this that sets the grand stage upon which to birth something ‘new’ in another that would never have been ‘new’ were it not for such a sacrifice.

Be the ‘New’

Might I suggest that this New Year, the ‘new’ in our lives is making the choice to become the ‘new’ in the life of another.  In whatever manner we choose to do that, we all can change a life and in doing so change a world.  Therefore, let us not contemplate ‘New Year’s’ resolutions.  Rather, let us formulate ‘New Life’ commitments.  And let us begin to do that by becoming the ‘new’ in the life of another.

The New Year

Refusing to Be Relegated to the Sidelines

We stand on the escarpment of a New Year.  In many ways, it seems that what lies ahead doesn’t rally us with energizing hope, but rather it seems to rattle us with deep apprehension.  From the vantage point we stand on at the beginning of this New Year, the landscape that lies ahead looks uncertain at best and disastrous at worst.  We see a world reeling from decisions that we don’t understand, actions that appear to border on the irrational, and directions that seem to have forsaken any mooring that the founding principles of our nation might have given them or a sense of mortality might afford them.

We stand on the listing precipice of this New Year with a host of political agendas and secular philosophies promising rosy tomorrows and a year brimming with the brightness of a world throwing off the old and seizing the new.  We hear the words and they tickle our ears, but in many ways we don’t see the landscape ahead reflecting what the words say it should reflect.  While many have taken hold of the words hoping that they pan out, deep inside, many of us aren’t certain that the promises made and the agendas outlined are deep enough, rich enough, transforming enough or solid enough to really accomplish what they say they can accomplish.  The reality is, we’re not all that certain that we want them to accomplish what they say they’ll accomplish anyway.

Resting in Hope Because We Can’t Rest in Anything Else

So, we rest in the hope that hope is enough because we don’t believe in the people that are preaching hope.  We hope that hope will be strong enough to drive the political agendas and secular philosophies; bolstering and empowering them sufficiently to do what they grandly visualize in their documented frameworks, but what they can’t do on their own.  Or do we hope that they don’t work because the disastrous outcome of their implementation is only going to make worse the very things that they claim their efforts will make better.   Often, we don’t even believe in ourselves and our ability to bring change, or in any manifestation of whatever this ‘self’ is that we are.  Our hope then rests in hope, not necessarily in the viability of what we hope for and who we hope in.  Somehow, we hope that it will all turn out okay.

But we might ask why do we do that?  Why do we so often opt for something that’s really not going to do what we need done, out of the hope that hope will carry whatever this is when whatever this is can’t carry itself?  Why do we settle like that?  Why do we pin our hopes on something that will likely explode in our faces if we pin anything on it, much less hope?

Sidelined Bystanders

I wonder if at its core our issue is a fear that is actually a multiplicity of fears.  Fear that we’re far too small to do anything but hope for the best rather than fight for it.  Maybe it’s an issue of being unable or unwilling to realize that we can actually impact things sufficiently to change things, rather than seeing ourselves as being exiled to some distant sideline of life where we can do nothing more than sheepishly root for a life that’s far too far away to touch.  Change is too often seen as an external thing that happens outside of our efforts, so we relegate ourselves to some periphery role where all we can do is hope with no means to exert any real influence.  I wonder how often we see ourselves as hapless and helpless bystanders in a greater drama that we have no ability to impact, whether that’s the drama unfolding in our nation, or the drama unfolding in our lives.

We look around us at the wild spiraling of a culture relentlessly gyrating in some direction that appears unhealthy at best, and with no direction at worst.  This massive “ship of state” or the various “ships” of our lives seem to be rolling on the churning seas of some wild societal storm with those at the helm announcing that the course is sure and the speed is steady.  Yet, peering out from our obscure place on the deck of these enormous ships, it seems that their courses are entirely unsure and their speeds are anything but steady.  Yet, despite the angst of the journey that we see before us, we feel far too small, far too irrelevant, and far too inconsequential to do anything about it.  And so our best hope is to hang on and hope . . . or so we think.

Can You Make a Difference?

Are we simply bystanders living out some periphery role in some larger drama whose stage is far too massive for us to ever ascend?  Are we doomed to haplessly sit by and watch our culture, our businesses, our marriage, our kids, our communities, or whatever it is that we might be watching spiral off into some cold, dark abyss?  Will we engage the coming New Year without really engaging it because somebody else is already engaging it in a way that gives us no room to engage it?

Is it Actually Possible that We Might Have Power?

We might ask “what is power?”  Is power derived from a collective of people whose numbers grant them power?  Is it derived from a position of authority that’s derived from some established structure?  Is power something granted to people by something bigger than the people to which it is being granted?  Is power a product of social position, breeding, wealth, education, the ability to be relationally savvy, or culturally astute, or outrageously intellectual, or is it held by people possessing an elevated acumen of some sort?

Or, is it the average person who takes the ‘all and everything’ of what they have and engages their world with what they’ve got?  That’s power!  It’s the average person like you or I who realize that it’s the “little things” that change “big things.”  It’s the small steps that ultimately result in giant leaps.  It’s the average person faithfully living out lives of integrity in the everyday grind of everyday living that changes cultures, redirects nations, and rewrites history.  Indeed, that’s power.

Ordinary People Who Do Extraordinary Things

Daryn Kagan wrote, “Bad things do happen in the world, like war, natural disasters, disease. But out of those situations always arise stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”  It is ordinary people who change the world because they’ve stepped up in situations both large and small, believing that whatever their situation might be they can make a difference either large or small.

It’s not about being ordinary.  It’s about being available.  It’s not about being ordinary.  It’s about refusing to refuse opportunity.  It’s not about being ordinary.  Rather, it’s about recognizing that the great movements and moments in history laid on the back of ordinary people.  It’s not about being ordinary.  It about recognizing the power of the ordinary to be extraordinary simply by being ordinary.  As Marco Rubio wrote, “America is the story of everyday people who did extraordinary things.  A story woven deep into the fabric of our society.”  The same story is woven deep into the fabric of our lives.

The New Year – Will We?

As we stand on the escarpment of this brand new “New Year,” we don’t have to relegate ourselves to some periphery role where all we can do is hope with no means to exert any real influence.  We don’t need to be a hapless and helpless bystander in a greater drama that you have no ability to impact.  We can live out intentional lives in our everyday worlds, being ordinary people of integrity engaging the world with integrity, and doing so believing that the smallest changes result in the biggest transformations. 

And so, will we dare to understand that it’s the average person who takes what they have and engages their world with what they’ve got?  Will we rise up sufficiently to grasp the reality that it’s the average person like you or I who realize that it’s the “little things” that change “big things?”  Will we step out on the belief that it’s the small steps that ultimately result in giant leaps?  Will we embrace the fact that it’s the average person faithfully living out a life of integrity in the everyday grind of everyday living that changes cultures, redirects nations, and rewrites history?  If we do, if we faithfully embrace these truths and live them out, we will change our worlds and we will alter this coming year.  May that be your commitment this New Year!

A Clean Slate

The Possibility of a New Start

With the New Year we long for a fresh start.  We want to wipe the slate clean, removing the smudges and the smears.  We want to get rid of the errors, the poor choices, the misguided decisions and the bruising flops that populated the previous year.  We want to wipe away old habits, clean up destructive behaviors, sponge up toxic relationships, run away from blood-sucking jobs and frantically flee the debt-feeding financial decisions that we made.  The New Year is our time to use a whole bunch of elbow grease to clean up the horrendous messes of the old year, sweep those dirty little choices under the carpet, smooth over places where the carnage of our decisions tore the landscape of our lives apart, and precariously prop up the things that were blown over by the selfish choices we made.  We’re wildly busy about the ‘spit and polish’ of getting everything tight and clean.

The Past Relished or Rejected?

We cross the threshold of the New Year without wanting to look back.  It’s not that we want to reject the past, but we much prefer to leave it behind.  We want a clean break, a new beginning, a fresh opportunity that’s in no way inhibited by whatever the past has been.  Indeed, we do cherish the good things that have happened.  However, we seem to celebrate them with a diminished sense; that they weren’t as good as good can potentially be.  We engage the New Year holding out some hopeful hope that it will bring us twelve months of living that will be good in a way that we haven’t quite been able to achieve.  That somehow this year will be what no year has yet been.  So celebration is often less about what we’re leaving behind, and a whole lot more about what we hope will come. 

The Seeds of Staleness

The New Year is the old year in redress.  It’s nothing more than the final tick of the second hand of the clock that throws December 31st over into January 1st.  It leaves nothing old behind and it takes nothing new with it.  It’s a continuation of whatever was into whatever’s going to be.  There is nothing inherently new about New Year’s.

Yet, because we ascribe a false newness to it, we assume that something has changed, that something has been left behind, that something has transitioned or transformed in the process of one day rolling into another. 

So we celebrate and we ‘party.’  We raise robust toasts to the new opportunities that we’ve fabricated from the broken and desperate shards of the past year.  We pen feel-good resolutions across our minds and across the pages of the calendar of the upcoming year.  We tell ourselves that it’s going to be better, that we’re going to beat old habits and turn careers around.  We shout down the corridors of the New Year, declaring in advance that we’re going to recommit to our marriages; that we’re going to complete college degrees, balance our spending, and watch our language.  We assertively put the New Year on notice, telling it that we’re going to beat addictions, lose weight, change our attitudes, bury hatred, resurrect forgiveness, overcome fears, undercut bad attitudes and change.

Wiping Out Staleness

The New Year is an opportunity for reflection.  We’ve set the calendar and flow of the year in such a manner that the New Year is parked at a place that affords us perspective.  In reality, nothing changes.  The truth is, we’ve been handed nothing new.  But we can stop, catch our breaths, rub our eyes clear of the smudges that life smears across them, brush off the dust that’s caked on us from the long roads we walk, and simply look around.  We have a chance to inventory and assess; to deliberately engage the reality of our lives, doggedly evaluate those realities, decisively execute strategies to change, and embrace an enthusiasm about the possibilities that these actions will bring to the New Year.

We can’t wipe the slate clean, but we can rewrite it.  We can’t ignore things but we can change them.  We can pretend that the New Year is something that it’s not, or we can persevere in learning from the past to change the future.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

Great things are hidden in small things.  That sounds terribly illogical.  Yet, it's only illogical because we don't really understand the nature of great things and that their greatness is marked in part by their ability to inhabit small things.  Greatness is not so much about size or importance as it is about meaning and value.  It's not necessarily the size of the thing, but the power that it possesses.  It's not about how vast something is, but the potential that it has within it.  It's realizing that great things find the best home in small things, for great things are always a compilation of small things anyway.

The God Who inhabits the vastness of this entire existence was born into the body of a single baby.  Greatness in smallness.  His plan to invade the world in order to save the world would not be to unleash all of the forces at His disposal in some strategic sweep.  It was, in fact, the opposite.  And therein lays the brilliance of it all.  In the same way, we are small.  Yet, because we are, we have the space for great things.  Ample space.  This Christmas, we need to celebrate the birth of this baby.  But we likewise need to ask, "What does the greatness of God wish to do in the smallness of us?"

Resources for Your Holiday Celebrations

Discover an array of holiday resources designed to enhance your celebrations on our website at www.craiglpc.com.  Craig's thoughtful, timely, and inspirational books make lasting gifts.  Discover all of his books at Amazon. com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  Also, take a moment to explore Craig's Public Speaking Resources for information regarding the resources available to your business, ministry, or organization.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

If we fictionalize the story of Christmas as some fanciful tale spun in the backwaters of history and people long removed, in that action we have succumb to the debilitating belief that the only viable idea of rescue is fiction.  And I can think of few things that are sadder than that.”

- Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is a novel about hope.  A novel about how incredibly devastating life can be, and yet how God can bring an incredible hope into the most devastating situations.  This story unapologetically and frankly embraces the harsh realities of life and allows us to walk alongside of people who are struggling with those realities.  And in sharing in their remarkable and poignant journey, we able to see through the pain and struggle and hopelessness of it all to finally understand where we can find abundant, enduring, and empowering hope.  Real hope.  Hope for a lifetime and more.

“The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” is an inspirational and energizing story of hope lost and hope rediscovered.  This is a story for our time, and every time.  It’s a story for you, today, tomorrow, and forever.  Each day, this thirty-day podcast series called “Thirty Days of Hope” provides the listener a brief excerpt from this inspiring and moving book.  Tune-in each day through Christmas and begin your own journey of hope.

You will find “The Eighth Page – A Christmas Journey” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.  You can enjoy this thoughtful and inspirational book in paperback, Kindle, Nook, and audio book formats.  It is my hope that this timely, inspirational, and moving novel will become part of your Christmas tradition each and every year.

Enjoy a brief video outlining this uplifting series "Thirty Days of Hope" at https://youtu.be/DiEUIcRm7vo.