the price is right
My wife and I along with some friends were able to attend the Remembrance Day Tribute in Ottawa.
As I was thinking and reflecting during the ceremony, I came to a simple truth:
Everything has a cost
I don't just mean that in a consumer/retailer scenario, I mean... EVERYTHING. The cost of freedom & peace was the lives of these soldiers who we were commemorating that day.
Let's break it down a bit further:
- Raising a child comes at a cost of your own time, resources and love
- To get fit and healthy, the cost is your commitment and physical energy
- For those seeking depth in their faith life, the cost could be looking past their own views and perceptions
I can go on, and I'm sure you get the picture.
I guess it really struck me as we were standing silently under the cold gray skies with thousands of others who gathered. Especially in today's world where convenience-on-demand is the norm, a lot of people just aren't willing to pay for anything.
Everyone wants a better this, or a better that, a better place, a better world. But for the most part, people are only willing to pay with their 2 cents.
I think we all have to dig a lot deeper into our pockets (our hearts, our minds and our souls too) to cover the cost of a better world.
A colleague and I know of a friend that was a VP of Marketing, making six figures, great benefits, and because of a sour economy, he was laid off.
The worse part of this story was not that he was laid off, but about his kids and also the kids of other high profile layoffs happening across North America. The kids of these families or the "entitlement generation", as we called them, grew up in an environment spending $300 on jeans, getting the latest iPod, get the newest computer for FREE! Essentially, this entitlement generation where raised getting anything they wanted, and now this generation will be experiencing very early in their age a BUST in the economy.
Now, I think about this and I see a HUGE re balancing of the world we live in today. If bad things are happening like this, we know that God is at work and through the hard times he will teach us how to dig deeper, God will put us all back on track.
Lastly, the cool part of this is that you know God is a awesome at marketing. God is getting his message out and is starting with the young.