Old Chandelier - May 2007

TAKE SOME ACTION AND REPLACE THAT CHANDELIER !

We needn’t look only to hot new ideas for insights.
Ancient wisdom still has much to teach us.
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is particularly good at
applying biblical principles to contemporary issues.
For example, Kushner tells about the many
modifications, improvements and repairs continually
needed for his old house that’s been his family home for
25 years.
Always on their to-do list but never at the top was
the dining room chandelier.
It was unattractive, but not broken, so they lived
with it all that time, despite many vows to replace it.

One day, when Kushner’s father was visiting, he
showed up in the dining room with a hammer.

“What’s that for?” Kushner asked.
“It’s for breaking that chandelier you’re always
complaining about,” his father replied. “If you don’t break it,
you’ll never get around to getting yourselves a new one.”

Kushner recognized a needed lesson. Some things
you just have to break or they’ll stay there forever. He
and his dad took down the chandelier, leaving only the
bare bulbs. Something had to be done, so the next day
they went to the lamp store and bought a new one.

Kushner makes a biblical and business analogy.
“It’s a curious but little known fact that the Israelites enslaved in
Egypt for 400 years never once asked to go free.”


So all of us should ask what chandeliers we’re
tolerating or carrying around in our own work or
personal life. Then determine to endure them no longer
— insist on making long-delayed changes.