Management expert Peter Drucker once said that 50 percent of all management decisions will be wrong. A crucial key to leadership success is responding well to mistakes when we inevitably make them. We remember Moses more for parting the Red Sea than for killing the Egyptian soldier.
Yesterday was apparently a bad day to be a high-profile politician. You may have heard about Senator Joseph Biden's difficult kickoff for his presidential candidacy. He spent the day trying to explain his description of Senator Barack Obama as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Today's New York Times reports that Mr. Biden later apologized to Mr. Obama and to previous African-American presidential candidates Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. It wasn't the positive spin he was hoping for, to be sure.
Meanwhile, French President Jacques Chirac is not faring much better in the news. The Times quotes Mr. Chirac as saying that if Iran had one or two nuclear weapons, it would not pose a big danger. He claimed further that if Iran were to launch a nuclear weapon against a country like Israel, such action would lead to the immediate destruction of Tehran. These remarks were vastly different from previous French positions. On Tuesday, Mr. Chirac summoned the same journalists who recorded his earlier interview back to Elysee Palace to retract many of his statements.
From America to France to Italy: today's Times tells us about an unusual letter to the editor on the front page of La Repubblica in Rome. The scalding epistle demanded an apologize from former Prime Minister Berlusconi for public flirting. It was written and signed by his wife. According to the report, Italians are glad that their political world is not boring. Mrs. Berlusconi is apparently not amused.
Management expert Peter Drucker once said that 50 percent of all management decisions will be wrong. A crucial key to leadership success is responding well to mistakes when we inevitably make them. We remember Moses more for parting the Red Sea than for killing the Egyptian soldier. History was influenced more by Peter's Pentecost sermon than his Maundy Thursday denials. Paul's legacy is found in the New Testament books he wrote, not the New Testament believers he persecuted.
Your Lord stands ready to redeem your past for his glory and your good, but you have to trust his help. A father cannot repair what his child will not give to him. It's human nature to want to pay our debts. If God will not punish the sins we confess, we'll punish ourselves. So know that guilt is not of God. Claim the fact of his pardon for all that you confess to his grace. Trust the One named "I Am," not "I Was" or "I Will Be." Let the past rest in the mercy of your Father, and trust his redemption for a present filled with purpose and a future as bright as his providence. Why do you need such grace today?
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