My CFO, Dave, has coined a fancy new corporate theological term, called “Business Sovereignty.” He mentions it every time something turns out for the good that we didn’t really expect.
You wouldn’t guess that there are theological references to business – well, there aren’t, actually; thus his need to make something up.
Now, I’m no theologian, but I think the idea behind God’s sovereignty is that, no matter what happens in life, or what decisions we make, we can trust that God is somehow behind it all. Or encompassing it all. Or permeating it all. Or something like that.
Like I said, I’m no theologian.
What I do know, is that Dave and I are making decisions and taking risks as we are running the company, but God works it all out one way or the other, just like he does with the rest of our lives outside of business. We do our best to make good decisions, choosing good strategies, trying to be smart and getting good advice and hiring good people, but the truth is we never really know if we’ve made a good decision until weeks or months later. That’s when you see the results start kicking in, the shareholder value increasing, and the return on your investments (or not).
But there have been many times when we’ve made decisions without knowing all the variables and complexities (who ever really does?) and it still worked out somehow. In spite of ourselves. Or sometimes we start dabbling in some area without giving it much thought, yet later we discover that it sets us up for something brilliant. And we tell each other how brilliant we are, even though we know it was God, not us.
Sure, there is some intuition going on, where we are drawing upon our experiences in responding to the events and market issues going on around us, but it’s more than that. We understand that it was God’s grace.
This is the business version of grace.
Grace is an undeserved showing of love from God. When you think about it, that grace is available throughout our days at work in many ways, when we get those little gifts from God – the clever surprises and good tidings and sighs of relief – those things that we usually take for granted. And sometimes we get those wonderful klunks on the head where God swoops in and saves the day when we never really even asked for it; the deal closes just in the nick of time, we miss the accident by seconds, the illness heals, disaster is averted. We may recognize and thank God for it, but more often, we’ll forget about God and just go out and have a few drinks to celebrate.
If we want to truly benefit from grace, we have to be aware, and we have to notice, and we have to be willing to accept it, to be grateful.
God reaches out to us to show us His love, every day. That is, I believe, how God actually intervenes in our lives: through this slippery, lovely thing called grace.
Even in the churn of business.
Thank God.
Photo image by Nancy Rosback.
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