4. Leave it looking great
I remember hearing a story about a stadium in the UK that was used for a big national event by the Jehovah Witnesses. After the event they had teams of Jehovah Witnesses come into the venue to clean it. They cleaned everywhere, even areas they hadn’t used, they went above and way beyond what was expected and the management of the stadium were amazed and deeply impacted by this kindness.
I like that story, it really challenged me about how we honour one another and how as Christian men we show our integrity in action.
We host the Gathering each year in a field in Swindon, you may have been there. What perhaps you haven’t seen is that after the event on the Monday and Tuesday we walk around the field for hours picking up miniscule pieces of rubbish, paper, plastic, sweet wrappers and the dreaded tent pegs.
We do it because we strive to show this integrity, and honour in the way we operate as a movement at CVM.
Let’s scale this down a bit to you and me, at work, at home or just out and about, what does this look like, to leave things better than we find them?
Like borrowing a car from a mate with a bit of fuel and giving it back full up with a wash and wax. Borrowing someones house while they are away and they come home to a fridge full of food.
I think we work within a pattern that says you give it back in the same condition, like a hire car, it goes back with the same amount of fuel in, that makes sense. But in other areas of life what would it be like to go beyond that, to leave thing better than how we found them?
This is one of those subtle things we can do that make a huge difference, the meeting room at work that everyone uses, trashes and the cleaner puts back together at the end of the day. What about one day a note of thanks to that person as they look around a spotless meeting room.
This may feel like superficial stuff but I think it does impact people and it helps to show that as Christian men, men living a different CODE, we practice honour and integrity and we leave stuff better than we found it.
Image Credit: Nicolas Barbier Garreau
