LEADERSHIP SERIES: Craving or Contented?

It was the first century Roman philosopher, Seneca, who observed, “Poor is not the person who has too little, but the person who craves more.”

Our society has built commerce on carving more and more. The Community Resource Act (CRA), and the US Government drove the kind of behavior the allowed people who could not afford housing to fulfill cravings for housing. The result has been nothing short of catastrophic.

Today, woven throughout modern secular literature on leadership is the thread of the importance of character in leadership - especially the literature on servant-leadership. The nature of character of contentment – often couched in terms like “finding wholeness” yields behavior that reaches goals but not for purely self-serving motives.

The contented leader is a concept that addresses personal core values and has nothing to say about achieving profitable market share. The later drives a business: the former drives how the leader leads the people who “do the business.” Agur’s prayer – like the Lord’s Prayer – recognizes the truth that living is to be a daily experience.

There’s an old prayer, that I was taught as a child, that might illustrate: “God is great, God is good, and we thank Him for ______.”

How are you filling in the blank?


Proverbs 30:7-9 (NIV) "Two things I (Agur) ask of you, O LORD; do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the LORD?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.


Copyright © 2009 by P. Griffith Lindell