Feeding the Beast
How do you know when enough is enough?
One of the biggest challenges facing businesses is knowing when to expand, when to acquire more space, add new products, develop more land, seek new platforms for growth.
Success can be a difficult thing to manage. It places demands on the business leaders and owners to maintain ground while improving, quarter after quarter, year after year.
Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land. The LORD of hosts has sworn in my hearing: Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant. - Isaiah 5:8-9
In today's reading, Isaiah warns those who seek to build wealth on wealth to beware. They may find themselves totally alone.
I wonder, though, if those who heard Isaiah's warning took it to heart.
Certainly the landowners would have ignored the message if they heard it. Having land was the key to success. There were always people around who needed work and they could be hired to work the soil.
There were also people who needed the food, so there was no fear of over-producing. So, the wealthy landowner would have assumed the future was bright and destined to get brighter. The success achieved with the first field provided money to buy another, and that process continued until he owned all the land.
Isn't that how we see the world for ourselves at times?
While it is true that the more I make, the more I can buy, it is also true that the more I have, the more I need to support what I have. I have to make as much or more next year to support what I bought this year.
Stockholders demand it and the market runs on that principle. Success becomes the beast that must be fed.
So, how do we get ahead of the cycle? How do we reduce the pressure to keep feeding the beast?
One obvious way is to avoid spending the money we make on things that require more and more maintenance, more future dollars we don't have.
A bigger house means higher property taxes and larger mortgage payments.
In business, a new client or customer means more work, and more work means more staff, larger facilities, more production costs.
Jesus had a strategy for this. Share everything. Everyone benefits together.
It seems like a bizarre way to run a business. If everyone owns the land and everyone works the land, no one becomes rich, right?
That economic model has also failed, as we have seen in communist countries, but there is a lesson here that might help us see a better way to manage the beast.
It involves restraint and planning. What can I do to meet the demand without increasing my debts or costs?
What can I do to make room for my growing family without putting them at risk?
How can I plan for the days when the money is not flowing the way it was before?
This is the time of year when we can get caught up in the frenzy of Christmas shopping, relying on credit to help us give our family and friends what we know they would love.
Can we afford to do that? If not, what other creative ways can we come up with to show our love, without breaking the bank?
We might just find that the joy comes from the giving, not the gift.
Happy shopping.
More to come...
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