Lyrics Of ” Find Us Faithful”

Today in the course, I heard this hymn during the hymnal session today. It is a hymn that I think its very meaningful.

I guess this is even more meaningful for Parents and Religious Teachers in church. Sometimes I wonder, After teaching for so long, I really wonder whether had we really successfully pass on our faith to the next generation of believers. Somehow or rather, i feel that the work I have done is very much lesser in quality then the predecessors that taught me.

I guess through this hymn, God is telling all of us to be faithful, only by then we would be able to leave behind that legacy for the students to follow, and this is really the thing God requires all of us, the believers of today to do.

Hearing it comes of bring me back to that imagery where Jesus on the last chapter of the Gospel of
John. The first instruction given by the Lord to Peter, is actually to feed my lambs, which is the little sheep.

So when they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?”
He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.”
He said to him, “Feed My lambs.”
He said to him again a second time, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?”
He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.”
He said to him, “Tend My sheep.”
He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?” Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, “Do you love Me?”
And he said to Him, “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed My sheep.
(Jn 21:15-17)

Find Us Faithful
By Steve Green

We’re pilgrims on the journey
Of the narrow road
And those who’ve gone before us line the way
Cheering on the faithful, encouraging the weary
Their lives a stirring testament to God’s sustaining grace

Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses
Let us run the race not only for the prize
But as those who’ve gone before us
Let us leave to those behind us
The heritage of faithfulness passed on through godly lives

Chorus:
Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful
May the fire of our devotion light their way
May the footprints that we leave
Lead them to believe
And the lives we live inspire them to obey
Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful

After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone
And our children sift though all we’ve left behind
May the clues that they discover and the memories they uncover
Become the light that leads them to the road we each must find
Repeat Chorus

 

The Business of Future Prediction and The Futility of Report Obsession

I was reading the news headline and there was a lot of interesting news headline, especially in the business section on the Channel news Asia

DBS says crisis could cost Singapore 99,000 jobs
“Credit Suisse predicted that some 300,000 jobs could be lost in Singapore this year and the next.”
India’s economy slows to 5.3% in Q3, lags forecasts
Economists lower Singapore’s economic growth forecasts

Sometimes I really wonder how are all these numbers arrived at? Did they consult some high priestess in the oracle or did they visit the gypsies?

I have an old buddy who once shared with me after he started to run operations, the manage engaged in the game of “Future Prediction”. So curious I asked him how it works. The processes are as follows

1. Compare the trends of the business volume for the past few month, and try to guess this months work volume.
2. Key them into an excel submit it to his boss for record
3. On the mid-Month, make a new guess. Whenever you change the number, you will be sent for a long meeting to explain why the number is increased or lowered
4. Finally at the month end, when the actual figures occurs, then the real fun begins
a. If your predicted figure is too low then actual, go into a long meeting to explain why its too low. And get a scolding for not being accurate
b. If the Figure is too high than the actual, go into a long meeting to explain why you failed to hit the target. and get a scolding for not being accurate
c. If the predicted figure is 100-200 dollars difference, then everyone is satisfied, no meeting is required.

As the steps move from 1-C, you will be constantly asked about a old figure that you have gave, then you are force to check your data all the way to years ago. When you first made an initial forecast. All the steps require extensive beautiful looking reports that will be admired for hours in the meeting room, and of course its my friend who needs to prepare this,

As I heard my friend talking about it, I was thinking how he made a prediction that is more accurate, so I asked him, “Is there any patterns or trends you can follow?” “What is the dependencies that can affect the volume?” the answer from him is simply “No” His customers are also unable to predict how much work they can generate.

Sometimes I wonder whether this is the process how the above estimates are being done, and I really question whether this data are actually useful to the business or not. If the business is purely dependent on work generated that is not within its control. so whats the big picture in this?

Sometimes I feel we are all living in a report hungry era. Where everyone wants reports for every little thing. And the moment they receive 1 report, they can spend hours trying to make sense of the data. Which is the reason why many sukhomlinov business leaders succeeds. they make very beautiful reports, which mainly doesn’t show anything.

Reading this on will most likely reminded you of the story I shared about the Emperor’s New Clothes.

So.. businesses, stop behaving like the silly king, who because of “Face Issue” rather choose to parade himself naked before the general public. So instead of spending precious man hours in predicting a future that cannot be predicted, as well as spending hours to churn out reports after reports. Let us all move forward and make money instead.

 

Unfufilled wishes to complete articles for the blog

I did a recap of my previous plan, now i found a 3rd direction of the blog, which may be easier to fulfill.

1. Les miserables: My crusade to find a easy to read version of les miserables to begin my study of the types of christians found in the story ends up in a failure, its seems i can only find a loosely translated french version which is extremely hard to read. The only English version i can find is 1200+ pages long, i do not have that many man hours to spend on this

2. Bible study on characters in the bible: Maybe i will begin with a smaller characters first, as my first attempted character has too many stories and i have not found a way to classify them in a meaningful way yet.

3. Bushido: Lately i found a book on Bushido which i purchase off acmabooks.com. i think i can make an article out of it pretty soon. I wonder how big  is the book man… lets hope its shorter then les miserables