It All Goes Back in the Box

This is excerpted from the "Ideal" speech [or Rollo if you will] that I gave at a Tres Dias weekend in 2002. The thought is good I think ... even if some of the illustrations might be a bit "dated."

Does anyone here but me seem to notice that the pace of life seems to be accelerating...that what it takes to keep all the plates spinning in our lives is constantly moving faster and faster? Citicorp became the number one lender in America when it cut in half the number of days it took to let people know whether or not their loan got approved. Domino’s Pizza became the number one seller of pizza in the U.S. because they guaranteed that they would deliver your pizza within 30 minutes. The CEO of Domino’s said, “We don’t sell pizza, we sell delivery.” And if you have ever tasted a Domino’s Pizza...you know what it is that he is talking about. There was an article in the newspaper I recall a few years ago about a guy who drives for Domino’s and he said that when he is in his car driving for Domino’s and puts that sign on his roof, he will go down the road and cars will actually pull off to the side of the road to let him through...like we used to do for ambulances. We don’t yield to ambulances anymore. We yield to pizza delivery drivers...because we are a people in a hurry.

About five years ago, USA Today had an article about a hospital in Detroit who must be taking a cue from Domino’s Pizza. A Detroit hospital guarantees that emergency patients will be seen within 20 minutes or the treatment is free. So far Doctor’s Hospital has delivered; since the offer was first made, business has been up 30%. Mortality rates have been up 120%...you know, win a few, lose a few; get ‘em in, get ‘em out.

People have fax machines; ATMs are proliferating; no one would think of living in a house without a microwave oven. Pert Plus became the number one seller of shampoo...you know why? Shampoo and conditioner in the same bottle. Remember all those years when you had to shampoo and then rinse, then condition and then rinse...and now it is just all in one bottle. “Wash and go” is their slogan...number one.

In 1967, expert testimony was given to the U.S. Senate and it was said that the labor and time saving technology was going to change the way that Americans work...that within 20 years, people would be working only 32 weeks per year or 22 hours per week or that they would retire at about the age of 40...we’d be saving all this time due to our technology. They said that within 20 years the number one challenge that Americans would face with regards to time would be what to do with all the excess time. Now it is 35 years later and let me ask you, is that really your number one challenge when it comes to time...what to do with all the excess?

About the same time, a new kind of restaurant became very popular and the American culture...a restaurant that for the first time sold food not on the basis of quality, not even on the basis of price, but on the basis of the speed with which it is served. And we coined a phrase for that type of restaurant, we called it “fast food." Fast food; not good food; not even cheap food; just fast food. But with fast food restaurants you still had to park the car, get out of the car, walk all the way inside, order the food, sit down someplace and then throw away all the stuff. And all that took time. So we invented drive thru windows, so that families could eat in vans as God intended them to.

Now even gas stations have a new deal where you can just pay at the pump. You don’t have to walk all the way into the office at the gas station and all that way back...save a good 11 or 12 seconds each way...just pay at the pump. And their slogan is...they have slogans at these gas stations...” we help you move faster.” We live in a world in which we will pay anybody who can help us move faster.

If you look at the life of Jesus, you will see a person who was never hurried. He was often busy. He had many things to do. But as he went through life he did things in such a way, he arranged his life in such a way that he was always in every moment available to His Father; able to led by the Spirit. And he was always able to love the people that came into His life. He was never hurried.

One of life’s greatest illusions challenge us here. It is contained in this little phrase, “when things settle down.” The illusion is that someday life will slow down and there will be time to get around to the things that are important. The reality is that “things are not going to settle down.” So if we don’t want to end up being so busy building up our little kingdoms that we have no time for the kingdom of God; so busy making a living that we have no time to make a life...we must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives. Instead, invest your time in the kingdom in your family, in your kids, in their school making it better...making it all God wants it to be.

Now do things ever get better, slower, more peaceful at Christmastime? Malls are crowded; airports are busy; traffic gets worse…all those things. And it seems to come earlier and earlier with each passing year. Sears had their Christmas stuff up on October 30 last year! October 30! These are sick people. If anything, around Christmastime it gets worse…you can tell it by the music we listen to. 150 years ago what kind of music did people like for Christmas? Silent Night…all is calm…sleep in heavenly peace. Now we like songs like Jingle Bell Rock and Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. Evidently the reindeer were in a big hurry like the Dominos guys. You know they gotta get all the way around the world in just one night.

Really what all these examples are about is a disease that completely ubiquitous in our society, one that might be called “Hurry Sickness”. If you have this syndrome, when you come to a stoplight with two lanes to choose from and a single car is in each, you find yourself calculating…you try to assess how recent the car models are, how much horsepower each of them have under the hood, who’s going to pull away the fastest. And that’s the one you pull up behind.

When you go grocery shopping and it’s time to checkout, you find yourself counting how many people are in each line, how full their carts are, etc. Now if you are really sick, you keep track of who would have been you in the lines next to you and you kind of watch as you go through the lines together. Which one is going to get through faster…and you may even mentally pressure the people ahead of you. If the person who would have been you in the line next to you gets through first and is out the door while you are still standing there in line, you go away kind of depressed. I mean, YOU LOST! People like that are “polyphasic”…they have to be doing more than one thing at a time…I know, I suffer from it too. But God wants us to be still and know that He is God. He also wants us to spend quality time cultivating life-changing relationships with members of our eternal family.

I learned to play Monopoly from my grandmother. She was the most ruthless Monopoly player I had ever known in my life. Imagine, if you will, that Donald Trump had married Leona Helmsley and they had had a child. You get some picture of what my grandmother was like when she played Monopoly. She understood the name of the game was acquisition. When I would get my initial money from the bank, I would just try to hold on to it because I didn’t want to lose any of it. She, however, spent everything, bought the properties she landed on as soon as she could and mortgaged it to buy more properties. And eventually, of course, the way the game goes, she would accumulate everything. She would become the “Master of the Board.” She understood that money was how you kept score in that game and that possessions are a matter of survival. And she beat me every time. And at the end of the game, she would look at me and say, “One day you’ll learn how to play the game.” She was kind of cocky, my grandmother, “one day you’ll learn how to play the game."

A year or two later, when I was about twelve, I played every day with a kid who lived on my block. And it dawned on me, as I played every day all through that summer, that the only way to beat someone at Monopoly was to make a total commitment to acquisition. That summer I learned how to play the game. By the time fall rolled around I was far more ruthless than even my grandmother. Then I went to play her. And I was willing to do anything to win. I was even willing to bend the rules. I played with sweaty palms. Slowly, cunningly, I exposed the soft underbelly of my grandmother’s weakness. Relentlessly, inexorably, I drove her off the board. The game does strange things to you. I can still remember it like it was yesterday. It happened at Marvin Gardens. I looked at my grandmother. This is the person who had taught me how to play...and she was an old woman by now... she had raised my mother...she loved me. And I took everything she had. I destroyed her financially and psychologically. I watched her surrender her last dollar and quit in utter defeat. It was the greatest moment of my life. And then she had one more thing to teach me, my grandmother. Then she said to me, “now it all goes back in the box.”

All of the houses and hotels, Boardwalk and Park Place, all of those railroads and utilities, all of that wonderful money, it all goes back in the box, she said. I didn’t want it to go back in the box. I wanted to leave the board out...permanently...bronze it maybe as a memorial to what I had achieved. See when she said it all goes back in the box, it was a way of saying to me, none of this is really yours. It doesn’t belong to you. You don’t own any of it. You just used it for a little while and now it all goes back in the box, and next time, it will all go to someone else. That’s the way the game works...so when you play the game, don’t forget this one lesson...when the game comes to an end, and the game always comes to an end, the stuff all goes back in the box.

We tend to try to become the master of our own little boards and often forget this one little thing, that the game will end. The game always ends folks. Sooner or later, it all goes back in the box. A businessman is jogging and he feels a sudden pain in his chest, and in an instant, it all goes back in the box. A mother is driving in her car and someone misses a stop sign, and in an instant, it all goes back in the box. The doctor says it’s malignant, and in a hospital bed in an instant, it all goes back in the box. House, car, boat, clothes, toys, they all go back in the box. So you have to ask yourself, Jesus says, “What is it in life that matters? What is it that is worth giving your life to?” This story gets lived out across the world millions of times every day, and in the end, it is only what you’ve done for the kingdom of God that counts for anything in this life and in the life to come.

Two great illusions prop up the lives of rich folks like this guy and like a lot of us. One of them is contained in this little phrase, “when things settle down.” The illusion is that some day life will slow down and there will be time to get around to the things that are important. Listen friends, do you know when things will settle down? When you die. Things will settle way down when they put you into the ground. But until that day comes, it is not likely that things are going to change in your life so that all kinds of time will become available for you to get around to important things. The second illusion that props up rich young lives is that someday more is going to be enough. This guy kept thinking that if I just get more…bigger barns, bulging portfolios, etc. The Bible says that contentment is a learned skill. It’s an attitude. It’s not that eventually I am going to have enough stuff so that I will become content. I must learn to be content with what I am living with right now.

I remember a Peanuts cartoon that showed Snoopy sulking on his doghouse eating dog food on Thanksgiving Day while Charlie Brown and his family were warm inside eating a turkey dinner. Then he remembered that it could be worse, he could have been the turkey. It could be worse. It could always be worse.

So when Tres Dias is over and you go out into the parking lot and see your car and that fancy Lexus across the lot…you’re going to say with passion, “It could be worse.” When you get home to where you live and you walk up to the door, you’re not going to wish you lived in a fancier house, but you’re going to say with passion, “It could be worse.” Lastly, and more importantly, when you wake up Monday morning, roll over and look at your wife, you’re going to say with passion, “….” NO, NO, NO, don’t do that after all!