I got an e-newsletter this week from the Wheaton Public Library. It was a business-oriented newsletter.

I should add that Lorraine and I love libraries. We get newsletters from and have our cards registered in Wheaton, West Chicago, Winfield and Naperville.

The Wheaton Library is doing a lot of great programming, especially considering the weirdness of the pandemic these last months.

Two book titles listed at the bottom of this week’s newsletter stood out to me:

The first: Power for All: how it really works and why it’s everyone’s business
by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro
If you don’t have enough power in your job, this book is supposed to help you get more of it. “Discover how to gain (and keep) power in any situation” the sales copy promises.

Second was: Betting on you: how to put yourself first and (finally) take control of your career
By Laurie Ruettimann
The description of this one was more intriguing to me. Find your Tijuana. Be a slacker: work less to accomplish more. Fix your money. The summary promises “hilariously relatable anecdotes and tips for professional growth.”

I should say that I haven’t read either of these books, and they might both be great. What stood out to me, though, as I scanned the newsletter, is how much power is an end goal, something that everyone wants and deserves and maybe can’t be happy without. These books are designed to help people get more of it for themselves. At least, I think that’s what they’re talking about.

What I’m wondering though is if either of these titles talk about humility as a key component to promotion. Or service.

And I’m thinking about the men at my Bible study table on Wednesday night talking about how hard it is in the business world to openly follow Christ. It doesn’t sound like a power grab.

In the upside down kingdom of Jesus, the order of things doesn’t really seem to fit with the modern business world. It might also be true in a different angle of upwardly mobile DuPage County at large. Substitute “status” for “power.” Strange world.

What about personal sacrifice? What about emptying ourselves of power and thinking more about other people’? Or doing what God wants instead of what we want? I mean, how do those things fit in the grasp for personal power? What if we took Paul at face value and did what he instructed in Philippians 2:5-11?

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

I’m not betting on Wil to do this. I’m betting on Jesus. I mean, not literally, you know. I’m not a gambling guy. It’s a metaphor.

But the other thing about this is that we don’t do it alone. Yes, we have the Holy Spirit and the Bible.

These library books seem to point to individualistic self-discovery as key. It would be easy to fall into thinking that, armed with a Bible—the sword of the Spirit--I can move forward and conquer whatever is set before me.

But no. I’m not betting on Jesus. We are betting on him. Together. It’s a team sport.

We easily forget that this journey is something we do connected to each other in our church, around the table in Bible study, in the pew on Sunday, with friends in small group or Adult Community, around a breakfast table or sharing the joy of Bible truths with children or STARS. Or caring for each other when we're sick or grieving.

When we face the hardest things of life, we don’t have to do it alone. Down is up, and that's okay.

We aren’t winning the Super Bowl or gold medals. We're running the race to heaven with Jesus and each other.

“A man and his little child are walking down the road and they are walking hand in hand,” Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes, “and the child knows that he is the child of his father, and he knows that his father loves him, and he rejoices in that, and he is happy in it. There is no uncertainty about it all, but suddenly the father, moved by some impulse, takes hold of the child and picks him up, fondles him in his arms, kisses him, embraces him, showers his love upon him, and then he puts him down again and they go on walking together.”

This lovingkindness care that Jesus showers on us is not about power; it’s love that transcends power. This is what we cannot live without. So we go on walking, together, and even when it doesn’t seem like God is even there, we discover oftentimes through one another that we are wrapped up in his arms. We can know the warmth of God's love that calls us to leave our nets and follow him no matter what.

Not my power but the power of Jesus our loving shepherd, our Father who made and owns it all, the Spirit who is always with us and uses all kinds of things to touch and help us move forward in this strange hour.

Note to self: membership class coming up; member nominations due soon.