Grandma’s Mantra

Talk about crazy. My colleague and I were walking down the hallowed halls of the school in which we worked when we heard the uproar. We turned to each other, raised eyebrows expressing shock. What in the world was that strident noise? With school just about to start there shouldn’t have been any loud roughhousing going on.

My colleague’s, “Let’s check it out” set our course, and we followed our ears to the source of the wild noise. Walking into the classroom from which the cacophony came, we stopped in wide-eyed astonishment. A sight we had never before witnessed (and hopefully never see again) met our eyes—the children were actually dancing on the tables!

My colleague came to her senses first. “What is going on here?” she queried in her serious teacher voice. Smiling cherubs turned to face us, and the wild gyrations stilled. Then, with a few words of redirection, students scampered off the tables and began to sit in their designated seats. One of us called the office for help —apparently the teacher of the class was late (again)—and it was painfully   obvious that the unsupervised students desperately needed the presence of an adult. Since my friend and I could not stay, we had our own classrooms to attend to, we needed help.

The story of the dancing-on-the-table students became an oft-recited anecdote in that school that caused teachers to shudder in horror. It represented some of the worst behavior teachers abhor, renegade behavior apparently springing from the fact that the teacher’s heart was not in her work. She consistently came late, consistently left early, and consistently failed to put in the preparation necessary for a well-run classroom. Sad to say, she epitomized the negative aspect of an axiom a friend and I came up with in our high school years: the degree of success is directly proportional to the degree of investment.

I’ve seen the truth of this played out over and over throughout the years. I’m sure you have, too. The music virtuoso doesn’t just “happen”—the excellence in performance is the result of hour upon hour of constant practice. A chef does not achieve cordon bleu status from one day to the next— it takes years of learning and practice cooking to achieve such a recognition . The expert fisherman does not become one by happenstance—it takes him hours and hours of study, preparation, and practice to become an accomplished angler. A wonderful sermon doesn’t just “happen”—it’s the result of hours upon hours of prayer, Bible study, and seeking God. A Christian with an aura of the presence of Christ is not by chance—it’s the result of days, weeks, months, and years of spending time with God in His Word as well as in their prayer closet.

While “off the cuff” actions might be necessary at times and can contain elements of greatness, excellence in any area comes only through persistent discipline.

Every day we are faced with decisions. Do we take the easy way—or do we stick in dogged determination to the discipline that will result in excellence? Businessman and entrepreneur Wesam Fawzi put it this way: “The quality of your life is built on the quality of your decisions.” In “The Road Less Traveled” Frost might have intimated that choices at a crossroads are equally traveled—but the number of people that choose a given road should not be our guiding factor. The important question each of us should pose is this: which road is best for me?

Bottom line: small investment, small return. Big investment, big return. Big investment is usually not the easy road, but it is hands down the most rewarding.

Who’d a “thunk” that the mantra Grandma María drilled into us, her little peeps, was a recipe for excellence in life ? “Do everything you do as if you’re doing it for Jesus,” she’d admonish. “Give it your all.” So we did—better that than face the wrath of Khan (embodied in Grandma’s great disappointment in us). The result? A family woven together by greatness—businessmen, entrepreneurs, educators, lawyers, and, best of all, a people whose heart beats after God’s .

Do you hanker after success? Do it God’s way: invest in what you are doing. Invest your heart, your time, your thoughts—and your God-given success will be sure to come forth in direct proportion. Above all, I sincerely hope that in those avenues of success you yearn for is included a closer walk with Jesus.

“And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men” (Colossians 3:23).

"He did it with all his heart and prospered"(2 Chronicles 31:21).