day 451: Breaking Point

We all have a breaking point when we are just not going to be able to take it anymore. Anyone who has ever been there knows what it feels like and knows that in those final days or hours working up to the break, that all kinds of bad things start to come out. We also work with people who we know are at their own breaking point or melt-down stage and if we don't reach out and help them then they are likely to go over the edge and we aren't going to be able to rescue them back. It sounds so severe, but it is not in the sense that when we are pushed hard in our jobs then we are vulnerable to making some mistakes that could have a life-long impact. One wrong word even could be enough to damage credibility or a relationship so severely that there is no return and no taking it back. To lose a job or lose a friend is just not worth it. So, we need to be able to identify for ourselves the danger signs as well as be sure that we can identify the signs of impending break down in us or our co-workers. Recently, reading the behaviors of what people will be like in the final days before Jesus returns, made me think that the list of characteristics also sound very familiar to the actions and attitude of one who reaching their breaking point. Let's take notice of what we read in 2 Timothy 3:1-4; "But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God." I can think through the list of people I know who have been broken and then crashed and burned in their work and personal life. Had I paid more attention to this list of characteristics might I have been able to have reached out and helped? Today, think of others and also take stock of yourself, and be sure that neither your co-workers or yourself are beginning to show the signs of the final days before hitting the breaking point. If so, then it is time to intervene and ask God to take back over, ASAP. God does not want us to find our breaking point without Him there to help us overcome and get it all back together.

Reference: 2 Timothy 3:1-4

day 413: The Final Days...

Much gets done in the 11th hour but usually work that gets done at the last minute comes with some ugliness in the process. It is in the last days, hours and minutes that the true nature of people becomes apparent. Sometimes that will be the good-nature of people who know how to get things done when every one else around them are tired, on edge and cranky. But for most of us, we go into defense mode and our ragged emotions can get the best of us and the not so attractive parts of us surface. Egos take over, frustrations turn into nasty words sprayed across whoever comes into the line of fire, stress and pressure causes us to boil over and self-control melts into trying to control others. I have many example of friendships unraveling in the quest for the finish line in the final days. The final days are never any fun. It is in these times that we need to be self-aware enough to know that our humanness and nature could lead into saying and doing things that we will regret later. It might be useful to keep a check-list of these watch-outs in front of us during these times so that we don't fall into the trap or slide into a hole that we can't dig ourselves out from. In 2 Timothy 3:1-4 Paul describes to Timothy what will happen to people in the final days before Christ returns, but the similarities of how we all can act in our own final days that we face are stark and can be that watch list for us; "You should also know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control; they will be cruel and have no interest in what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasures rather than God." It is a harsh list but I suspect there are traits here that are not unfamiliar to any of us who have our backs to the wall and in the final days and hours of stressful projects. If we are in the middle of this now, or see these days coming, let us guard our hearts first and then allow God to guard us against living out any of these traits. May we be guarded, stay safe and true to what we know and believe in any final days.

Reference: 2 Timothy 3:1-4 (New living Testament)