"Get It Right" Prompts

I am halfway through a two-day "Global Leadership Summit" presented by Willow Creek. The opening session was about the process of decision making. There are four traditional guides to making a decision: What does the Bible say? What do others advise? What does past experience teach? Which way is the Spirit prompting? But Bill Hybels suggested going one stage further and coming up with 'axioms' which distil all the above into a nugget of wisdom. By way of example he quoted Abraham Lincoln - "The best way to defeat my enemy is to make him my friend." This is in keeping with the four traditional guides but is a shortcut to making the right decision.

I have a love-hate relationship with pithy sayings like this. Wisdom and truth can't always be so easily captured. There seems to be something simplistic and tacky about (for example) all the advice offered in the Baz Luhrmann single which begins "wear sunscreen...". On the other hand I sometimes find such nuggets of wisdom intriguing, interesting and even inspiring.

[later... the conference is now finished] It occurs to me that

• a) If a short saying is crafted from a careful consideration of the four traditional guides, it is not going to be trite or glib.
• b) If a short saying is not merely a repetition of someone else's wisdom but a distillation of ideas which have come out of my own particular context and are in keeping with my own particular personality, then it is going to be of some worth.
• c) If I were to think of such short nuggets not as 'wisdom' in themselves but as mere reminders of a more thoroughly developed issue, then there is less danger of oversimplifying.
• d) It is not just for guidance in making decisions that these pithy reminders will be useful for, but in many other aspects of life as I seek to live it in the way Jesus has given it - "to the full".
• e) I have plenty of ideas and inspirations arising from the Global Leadership Summit which will be lost if they are not captured somehow - say, in a computer document listing my "full life reminders" each followed by explanatory notes.
• f) Such a document will be a useful repository of future ideas and inspiration too.
• g) As I come up with meaningful and workable FLRs I can post them on this blog.
• h) I wonder if there is a catchier name for them? - and the answer is yes. Weeks later I have come up with GIRPs - a longer acronym but it can be pronounced more easily. It stands for “Get it right” prompts.