Sweat Capital

(Proverbs 13:11 KJV)  Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase.

I recently had the opportunity to spend some time discussing life with a few millennials.  It is like talking to aliens from outer space.  They have starry eyed dreams of making a big splash in life but they don’t have a job now.  Actually this way of thinking has been around for generations.  I would guess it was fifteen or twenty years ago I had a conversation with a young woman who in desperation had taken a job teaching middle school.   She was constantly frustrated with the daily grind of the classroom and the ridiculous demands of administration.  Part of the problem was that she was teaching science with only a few classes in anthropology under her belt.  The bigger problem was a sense of entitlement.  Her dignity was attacked because she had taken all kinds of classes in public policy and she “was trained to be the one behind the desk giving orders, not the one out in the field.”

Too many people want the rewards of hard work and don’t want to put in the hours required.  I see budding musicians who will never know success because they don’t see the importance of learning their scales.  I see future NBA stars who will never get off the playground because they think they are too good to learn discipline. 

So?  Don’t sneer at hard work.  It is the path to success.  This is true in our careers, our child rearing and our spiritual walks.