Two Observations

So, this is a blog I wrote several weeks ago and never published for some reason. I will go ahead and publish because I think these are some thoughts we should consider. Please, read and respond.

Ok, I have two observations to share. One is deeply spiritual, the other is work related.

1) Work related--I was thinking about some of the Realtors that I have met through my experiences so far. Many of them are hard working people. Some are not all that hard working but are good folks that just don't have a ton of motivation. Some, are in a different boat altogether. Those are the ones I am focusing on in this posting.

Today Marty Reuter spoke to our sales meeting. He is the top dog in charge of franchises for the entire Weichert Company. One thing he said was that it is extremely important to put the client ahead of the commission. When he said this, it really hit home because I know that I do this. Often I have encouraged buyers to look at a lower priced home because it is a better home and a better fit for their budget. I have heard stories, however of my colleagues pressing the higher priced home no matter what. Then I thought about the ones that complain constantly about the state of the housing market. It occured to me that these are probably the same people. You see, it takes roughly the same amount of work to sell a $100,000 house as it does to sell a $300,000 house. There is, of course, some variation to this rule but, basically, if you have a home priced right and you do a great job of presenting the home, you can sell either home with virtually the same budget and virtually the same amount of effort. I work hard on my lower priced listings and I work hard on my higher end homes. Obviously, the payoff is higher on the higher end homes. I think the Realtors that constantly complain forget that they are also allowed to sell lower priced homes. I think they may have forgotten this because they feel that if they expend the energy, they should get a higher payoff. Just a thought. In other words, I am willing to go for the quantity, even if it means I work twice as hard to earn the same amount of commission (two houses to one).

2) My second observation occurred on Friday at the In Tents Worship weekend with the teens and college kids from Church. I watched Doug and Hunter playing in the river. They were trying to get to this rock that was upstream. In order to get to this rock, they had to fight against a pretty hard current. I thought about how the Bible frequently speaks of God and God's love as water (pouring out on us, etc.). Then I thought about how the river was like God's love. It just keeps flowing and is pleasant but extremely powerful. Then I thought about how we set arbitrary goals that pit us against God's love and plans (like reaching the rock in the river). We fight and fight and fight to get to our destination. All the while the love is around us, flowing over us and trying to sweep us away and we just keep fighting and expending energy. When we finally get to our goal, we feel pleased but tired and realize that we fought for no real reason. All the while, if we had just "gone with the flow", life would have been much more pleasing. Not only would it have been pleasing but we would have been blessed because the flow would have had us see things we would have missed like the random rope swing. I challenge us to go with the flow and be careful about setting arbitrary goals, especially if they pit us against what we know God would have us to do.