A Certain Lack of Strategy
Stories
Contents
"A Certain Lack of Strategy" by Keith Hewitt
"My Quaking Heart" by Frank Ramirez
A Certain Lack of Strategy
by Keith Hewitt
Matthew 25:14-30
The chair was supposed to be comfortable, he guessed, but instead the deep, soft cushions felt like leather-covered quicksand drawing him ever deeper, until there was no escape possible. As he sat -- or rather sank -- in the chair, waiting for his manager to complete her review, he tried to tamp down his nervousness by focusing on the environment. For instance, on the wall behind him was a clock…he could hear it. The monotonous ticking that marked the sweep of the second hand was the loudest sound in the room.
Except, possibly, the sound of his own heart pounding.
There was a rushing sound, too, and he was trying to discern whether that was the sound of the ventilation system, or the sound ice cold blood makes as it churned through his body, when she sat up, closed the manila folder on her desk, and folded her hands on it. For a few moments she just stared at him, and he had the feeling that she was examining the skeleton beneath his skin; then she said quietly, “So help me understand. A year ago, I gave you responsibility for fifty thousand dollars.”
She paused; he nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And today you are giving me your year-end report showing me that you have accumulated…” she tapped the folder, “…fifty thousand, three hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
He licked his lips. “That’s not exactly correct, ma’am. The report fails to take into account approximately twelve dollars in bank fees, and an estimated thirty percent tax burden on the investment income, so a more accurate gain would be on the order of three hundred-sixty dollars and sixty cents.”
“I see.” Her eyes lost focus for a moment, then one eyebrow arched slightly. “So that brings your rate of return down from a whopping point seven five percent to something closer to point seven three percent. Not even a full three-quarter percent interest.”
It sounded even worse when she said it. He just swallowed hard, and nodded.
“I see.” She was silent, again, for what seemed like an hour or so, then she sighed. “One of your colleagues invested in silver, and did moderately well this past year; another placed a fairly large bet on an internet startup and made a killing when they were bought out by Google. You, on the other hand, chose to invest the money in a passbook savings account. I know you can read. I know you at least passed your classes in economics and business. So please tell me why you ‘invested’ in a passbook savings account when your clear directive was to invest my money and make more money.”
“First, to be fair, it’s not exactly your money,” he began, and stopped when he saw her expression. “I mean, it is yours to invest, certainly, and you’ve been entrusted with it -- ”
“Just as I entrusted you with part of it. Do you understand what an investment firm does? We take money, and we use it to make money. Money that goes back to the client, who happily pays us fees so that we will continue to make them money when they invest with us. They come to us looking for expertise, honesty, and -- yes -- even a willingness to take an informed risk, now and then. If they wanted to just hold onto their money and not make more, they could just put it in a passbook savings account themselves. They don’t need to be paying us to do it for them.”
Sweat was now trickling freely down his back -- ironically, his blood was still cold, pooling in his stomach. He leaned forward. “It’s just that there’s so much pressure, ma’am. I know -- we all know -- that you expect high performance. You also expect us not to lose money at all. Ever. And when I finally got the chance to actually manage some, I didn’t want to take a chance on disappointing your confidence in me.”
“So, instead, you put it in the bank. At any point in your thought process, did it ever occur to you that if I wanted that money in a bank account, I could have given it to my daughter to put into her Junior Saver’s Account? At least we would have gotten a nice plush toy out of it!” Her voice rose, but it was still barely above a conversational level.
He shrugged. “I’m sorry.”
“You say that I expect my account managers to never lose money, but if you knew me you would know I am not that risk averse. I understand what you, apparently, don’t: that if you expect a reward, you have to be willing to risk. If I am giving you capital, I am expecting you to actually do something with it. With every reward, there is a risk -- but ideally, the potential reward makes the risk tolerable. If I can’t trust you to use what I give you, why would I give you anything?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, ma’am.”
She frowned. “Neither do I. I hire managers who know what they’re doing -- strategic thinkers, risk takers -- informed risk takers. But what you’ve shown me with this…this joke, is a certain lack of strategy that I find troubling. Very troubling.”
He gulped swallowed hard again. He said nothing; there was nothing to say.
Finally, she shook her head and made a tiny shrug. “I don’t know what else to do. I can’t trust your judgment right now, I don’t know if I ever will. You’re banished.”
He sat bolt upright, pulling himself out of the enveloping cushions. “But -- ”
“Banished,” she said crisply, and reached for another folder.
After a few moments he got up slowly and left the office, slouching out the door like every refugee who had ever fled with nothing but the clothes on their back. When the door closed, she looked up from the folder she had opened and reached for her phone, touched the intercom button. Instantly, a woman answered. “This is Adrienne.”
“Adrienne, young Mister Jenkins has been a complete disappointment. Unless and until he gets himself straightened out, he’s transferred. Banished to the outer darkness.”
“Outer darkness, ma’am?” the voice asked without expression.
“Yes. He already knows.”
“Very good, ma’am. I’ll book his flight to New Jersey right away.”
“Thank you.” She touched the button again, and turned back to the folder.
Maybe this one wouldn’t disappoint her…
* * *
My Quaking Heart
by Frank Ramirez
Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18
The great day of the LORD is near, near and hastening fast; the sound of the day of the LORD is bitter, the warrior cries aloud there. -- Zephaniah 1:14
Sometime in the year 73 AD a Roman officer, stationed in the Syria Province, held a sharpened quill in his hand, dipped it in ink, and began to write on a piece of papyrus, the paper-like product made out of the reeds of a plant that grew along the Nile.
This unnamed officer, no doubt hardened by many engagements, had seen something so horrifying he could hardly put his head around it. He started to write a letter in Latin to a good friend -- about what is hard to say, but it may have been the thing that was haunting his dreams. He wrote
Greetings!
My dear brother, I pray --
But that was that. For whatever reason he left the letter unfinished. He turned over the piece of papyrus and, quoting from a poem that had become scripture to the people of his land, wrote these few words that seemed to speak to some deep pain:
Dear Anna, the dreams that haunt my quaking heart!
What dreams indeed? The poem he quoted from was Virgil’s Aeneid, the epic that chronicled the journey of Aeneid, a survivor of the Trojan War. Aeneid sailed from the ruined city of Troy through many dangers, arriving at last in Italy to found Rome and ultimately what would become the Roman Empire. Virgil’s poem quickly became a scripture of sorts for the Romans, linking a legendary past with a glorious present.
The scrap of papyrus was found almost exactly nineteen centuries later, when Yigail Yadin and other Israelies searched for acheaological evidence that the story of the mass suicide of 960 souls in the fortress of Masada was true.
What the Roman Empire called The Jewish War (69-73 AD) was long and bitter and costly in terms of life and property on both sides. It was begun by the Sicarrii, the guerilla fighters whose apocalyptic vision inspired them to attempt to drive Rome into the sea in accordinance with what they believed was God’s will.
The war’s ending was inevitable. The might of Rome was too great for Judah, which was, after all, only an unruly portion of a distant province.
Josephus, who is one of our major sources of information about the war, is not always considered reliable. He was Jewish, but he believed that the scriptures pointed towards Rome as the fulfillment of prophecy, and his historical work, “The Jewish War,” was meant to please the Roman authorities.
Centuries after its writing, twentieth century historians questioned his account of the final days of Masada, the last holdout against Rome. This mighty fortress, originally built by Herod the Great, set high upon a mountain, could be easily defended, and it was, for many months. However, the Romans had the money, manpower, determination, and patience to build an earthworks ramp up the side of the mountain, so that it could reasonably assualt this last island of resistance against the imperial might.
The last holdouts are believed to have been the Sicarii, nearly a thousand of them, including family members. According to Josephus, the night before the Romans would break down the gates of the fortress, Eliezar Ben Yair, (“son of Yair”) the military leader of the group, is reported to have said that within a day they would be prisoners of the Romans. He proposed a way for them to thwart the Romans and die free. Each man would kill his own family, then eleven men chosen by lot would kill all of the men, and then one of the eleven would kill the other ten, and finally himself. In this way only one person would commit suicide.
The next day the Romans broke through the gate to discover 960 dead, men, women and cildren. There were only seven survivors, two women and five children, who hid from the carnage and the killing. It is they who purportedly told the story that came to Josephus through the Romans.
The Yigael Yadin uncovered many artifacts, including this scrap of papyrus. They also recovered eleven stones, each with a man’s name on them, perhaps the very lots that were cast to determined who would be the last man alive. One of the names is very clear -- Ben Yair -- the one who made the speech. His plan for mass suicide is believed to have inspired the Roman officer, who chose a verse from a beloved poem to express his deep feelings.
Dear Anna, the dreams that haunt my quaking heart!
Certainly, as Zephania the prophet had said many centuries before, this day of the Lord was very bitter, and more than one Roman warrior must have cried aloud at the sight that awaited them in that fortress on Masada.
(The translation of the incomplete letter is by the present author. The line from the Aenid comes from the Robert Fagles translation).
*****************************************
StoryShare, November 19, 2017, issue.
Copyright 2017 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"A Certain Lack of Strategy" by Keith Hewitt
"My Quaking Heart" by Frank Ramirez
A Certain Lack of Strategy
by Keith Hewitt
Matthew 25:14-30
The chair was supposed to be comfortable, he guessed, but instead the deep, soft cushions felt like leather-covered quicksand drawing him ever deeper, until there was no escape possible. As he sat -- or rather sank -- in the chair, waiting for his manager to complete her review, he tried to tamp down his nervousness by focusing on the environment. For instance, on the wall behind him was a clock…he could hear it. The monotonous ticking that marked the sweep of the second hand was the loudest sound in the room.
Except, possibly, the sound of his own heart pounding.
There was a rushing sound, too, and he was trying to discern whether that was the sound of the ventilation system, or the sound ice cold blood makes as it churned through his body, when she sat up, closed the manila folder on her desk, and folded her hands on it. For a few moments she just stared at him, and he had the feeling that she was examining the skeleton beneath his skin; then she said quietly, “So help me understand. A year ago, I gave you responsibility for fifty thousand dollars.”
She paused; he nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And today you are giving me your year-end report showing me that you have accumulated…” she tapped the folder, “…fifty thousand, three hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
He licked his lips. “That’s not exactly correct, ma’am. The report fails to take into account approximately twelve dollars in bank fees, and an estimated thirty percent tax burden on the investment income, so a more accurate gain would be on the order of three hundred-sixty dollars and sixty cents.”
“I see.” Her eyes lost focus for a moment, then one eyebrow arched slightly. “So that brings your rate of return down from a whopping point seven five percent to something closer to point seven three percent. Not even a full three-quarter percent interest.”
It sounded even worse when she said it. He just swallowed hard, and nodded.
“I see.” She was silent, again, for what seemed like an hour or so, then she sighed. “One of your colleagues invested in silver, and did moderately well this past year; another placed a fairly large bet on an internet startup and made a killing when they were bought out by Google. You, on the other hand, chose to invest the money in a passbook savings account. I know you can read. I know you at least passed your classes in economics and business. So please tell me why you ‘invested’ in a passbook savings account when your clear directive was to invest my money and make more money.”
“First, to be fair, it’s not exactly your money,” he began, and stopped when he saw her expression. “I mean, it is yours to invest, certainly, and you’ve been entrusted with it -- ”
“Just as I entrusted you with part of it. Do you understand what an investment firm does? We take money, and we use it to make money. Money that goes back to the client, who happily pays us fees so that we will continue to make them money when they invest with us. They come to us looking for expertise, honesty, and -- yes -- even a willingness to take an informed risk, now and then. If they wanted to just hold onto their money and not make more, they could just put it in a passbook savings account themselves. They don’t need to be paying us to do it for them.”
Sweat was now trickling freely down his back -- ironically, his blood was still cold, pooling in his stomach. He leaned forward. “It’s just that there’s so much pressure, ma’am. I know -- we all know -- that you expect high performance. You also expect us not to lose money at all. Ever. And when I finally got the chance to actually manage some, I didn’t want to take a chance on disappointing your confidence in me.”
“So, instead, you put it in the bank. At any point in your thought process, did it ever occur to you that if I wanted that money in a bank account, I could have given it to my daughter to put into her Junior Saver’s Account? At least we would have gotten a nice plush toy out of it!” Her voice rose, but it was still barely above a conversational level.
He shrugged. “I’m sorry.”
“You say that I expect my account managers to never lose money, but if you knew me you would know I am not that risk averse. I understand what you, apparently, don’t: that if you expect a reward, you have to be willing to risk. If I am giving you capital, I am expecting you to actually do something with it. With every reward, there is a risk -- but ideally, the potential reward makes the risk tolerable. If I can’t trust you to use what I give you, why would I give you anything?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, ma’am.”
She frowned. “Neither do I. I hire managers who know what they’re doing -- strategic thinkers, risk takers -- informed risk takers. But what you’ve shown me with this…this joke, is a certain lack of strategy that I find troubling. Very troubling.”
He gulped swallowed hard again. He said nothing; there was nothing to say.
Finally, she shook her head and made a tiny shrug. “I don’t know what else to do. I can’t trust your judgment right now, I don’t know if I ever will. You’re banished.”
He sat bolt upright, pulling himself out of the enveloping cushions. “But -- ”
“Banished,” she said crisply, and reached for another folder.
After a few moments he got up slowly and left the office, slouching out the door like every refugee who had ever fled with nothing but the clothes on their back. When the door closed, she looked up from the folder she had opened and reached for her phone, touched the intercom button. Instantly, a woman answered. “This is Adrienne.”
“Adrienne, young Mister Jenkins has been a complete disappointment. Unless and until he gets himself straightened out, he’s transferred. Banished to the outer darkness.”
“Outer darkness, ma’am?” the voice asked without expression.
“Yes. He already knows.”
“Very good, ma’am. I’ll book his flight to New Jersey right away.”
“Thank you.” She touched the button again, and turned back to the folder.
Maybe this one wouldn’t disappoint her…
* * *
My Quaking Heart
by Frank Ramirez
Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18
The great day of the LORD is near, near and hastening fast; the sound of the day of the LORD is bitter, the warrior cries aloud there. -- Zephaniah 1:14
Sometime in the year 73 AD a Roman officer, stationed in the Syria Province, held a sharpened quill in his hand, dipped it in ink, and began to write on a piece of papyrus, the paper-like product made out of the reeds of a plant that grew along the Nile.
This unnamed officer, no doubt hardened by many engagements, had seen something so horrifying he could hardly put his head around it. He started to write a letter in Latin to a good friend -- about what is hard to say, but it may have been the thing that was haunting his dreams. He wrote
Greetings!
My dear brother, I pray --
But that was that. For whatever reason he left the letter unfinished. He turned over the piece of papyrus and, quoting from a poem that had become scripture to the people of his land, wrote these few words that seemed to speak to some deep pain:
Dear Anna, the dreams that haunt my quaking heart!
What dreams indeed? The poem he quoted from was Virgil’s Aeneid, the epic that chronicled the journey of Aeneid, a survivor of the Trojan War. Aeneid sailed from the ruined city of Troy through many dangers, arriving at last in Italy to found Rome and ultimately what would become the Roman Empire. Virgil’s poem quickly became a scripture of sorts for the Romans, linking a legendary past with a glorious present.
The scrap of papyrus was found almost exactly nineteen centuries later, when Yigail Yadin and other Israelies searched for acheaological evidence that the story of the mass suicide of 960 souls in the fortress of Masada was true.
What the Roman Empire called The Jewish War (69-73 AD) was long and bitter and costly in terms of life and property on both sides. It was begun by the Sicarrii, the guerilla fighters whose apocalyptic vision inspired them to attempt to drive Rome into the sea in accordinance with what they believed was God’s will.
The war’s ending was inevitable. The might of Rome was too great for Judah, which was, after all, only an unruly portion of a distant province.
Josephus, who is one of our major sources of information about the war, is not always considered reliable. He was Jewish, but he believed that the scriptures pointed towards Rome as the fulfillment of prophecy, and his historical work, “The Jewish War,” was meant to please the Roman authorities.
Centuries after its writing, twentieth century historians questioned his account of the final days of Masada, the last holdout against Rome. This mighty fortress, originally built by Herod the Great, set high upon a mountain, could be easily defended, and it was, for many months. However, the Romans had the money, manpower, determination, and patience to build an earthworks ramp up the side of the mountain, so that it could reasonably assualt this last island of resistance against the imperial might.
The last holdouts are believed to have been the Sicarii, nearly a thousand of them, including family members. According to Josephus, the night before the Romans would break down the gates of the fortress, Eliezar Ben Yair, (“son of Yair”) the military leader of the group, is reported to have said that within a day they would be prisoners of the Romans. He proposed a way for them to thwart the Romans and die free. Each man would kill his own family, then eleven men chosen by lot would kill all of the men, and then one of the eleven would kill the other ten, and finally himself. In this way only one person would commit suicide.
The next day the Romans broke through the gate to discover 960 dead, men, women and cildren. There were only seven survivors, two women and five children, who hid from the carnage and the killing. It is they who purportedly told the story that came to Josephus through the Romans.
The Yigael Yadin uncovered many artifacts, including this scrap of papyrus. They also recovered eleven stones, each with a man’s name on them, perhaps the very lots that were cast to determined who would be the last man alive. One of the names is very clear -- Ben Yair -- the one who made the speech. His plan for mass suicide is believed to have inspired the Roman officer, who chose a verse from a beloved poem to express his deep feelings.
Dear Anna, the dreams that haunt my quaking heart!
Certainly, as Zephania the prophet had said many centuries before, this day of the Lord was very bitter, and more than one Roman warrior must have cried aloud at the sight that awaited them in that fortress on Masada.
(The translation of the incomplete letter is by the present author. The line from the Aenid comes from the Robert Fagles translation).
*****************************************
StoryShare, November 19, 2017, issue.
Copyright 2017 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
