The reality is, sooner or later, because of one thing or another, we all are going to die. The human mortality rate is 100 percent. Even if you are a young adult just starting in business or your professional career, this is a reality you will face one day.

From a frontline medical perspective, I along with my wife and daughter, saw the pandemic at its very worst. Many people did not take care of themselves. Others chose to ignore well-considered care measures. This behavior was disappointing, making our job to treat the sick even more difficult.

Engaging in work, parenting, personal hobbies or some other activity, there are two extremes for how we do what we do. We can adopt the “good enough is…good enough” mindset, trying to get by with a relative minimum of effort. Or we can choose a very different approach, that of perfectionism, a fixation on attempting to do things exactly right.

Temporary rewards with permanent consequences. Fraud always focuses on short-term objectives, ignoring the long-term ruin such dishonesty can cause – to one’s job, a career, a reputation, a life.

Gathered together were admirals, generals, captains, colonels, corporate CEOs, medical doctors, professors. Influential men of various ranks and professions. None of their successes and failures were apparent, however, for without their uniforms they all looked the same. The gathering was a trip down memory lane, our U. S. Naval Academy class of 1961’s 55-year reunion, in 2016. As I looked around the room and recaptured memories of all those young warriors, filled with incredible hopes and dreams and aspirations, all I could think of was, “Where have they gone?”

The adage from years ago informed us the only things certain in life are death and taxes. Those two remain constant, at least in most countries, but there is at least one other certainty we all must confront: Change. Just as surely as the sun will rise in the east every morning, each new day will bring with it changes of some kind, whether we like it or not.

There was a time when a simple handshake was as good as a contractual agreement signed by two or more parties. For the most part, those days have been gone for a long, long time. In fact, even signed contracts are often broken and contested more than we might imagine.

God sees our vocations – even our careers – in a much broader way. They are an important part of our “calling,” what the Lord wants us to do during our time on Earth, participating in His divine purposes.

In the business and professional world, we admire strong and bold leaders. Stakeholders in companies typically look for proud, assertive individuals to head their organizations, whose courage, confidence, and determination seem unshakable. In His “sermon on the mount,” Jesus Christ declared, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5), but corporate boards of directors typically do not want people like that for leadership roles in their companies.

In difficult economic times, many of us have friends or relatives in need. We want to do whatever we can to help. The easy thing may be to just give them some money. A gift card to the grocery store or paying a utility bill can be a big relief for somebody short on cash. But Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than receive” (Acts 20:35) One application of this admonition is that the receiver might not be as excited about the gift as you are as the giver – so caution is advised as you respond.