John Gunter

Life - Faith - One Bridge

Contentment. . . my on-going struggle

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After having yet another day that challenged my personal contentment in many ways (click here to read that post), I have been thinking about the subject of contentment more and more. Therefore, this post and maybe one or two more are going to be on this area of CONTENTMENT.

John Gunter looking stupid
This is me looking like I care too much about this rented car during my birthday car race adventure. . .

Allow me to start this out with a question regarding the area of contentment.

Are you content in life?

True confession . . . contentment, true contentment, has been something with which I have struggled throughout my life.  No matter what I have had, I have often wanted more. In little league baseball, it wasn’t enough to be an “all-star”, I was frustrated that I wasn’t the best in the entire league.  In school and work, I have often pushed myself well beyond reason, well beyond bosses’ and professors’ expectations. Even in accomplishment, I often think more about what I did wrong instead of what was done well. Why is this?

Through it all, though, I know that I am not alone.  I have found that one of the maladies common to almost all man is the seemingly impossible pursuit of true and lasting contentment.  Simply stated, we want what we don’t have.  It has always been this way in most of our lives, it just looks differently at different stages in life.

We want more friends, better toys, and a later bed-time in elementary school. We shift to the desire of greater popularity, athletic prowess, better grades, and hopefully a girlfriend/boyfriend in high school. College adjusts our longings to resume building and a spouse.

We get our first job

[Read more…]

My “rabbit guy” and other quirks with my life in Asia. . .

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Buddy and Madison
Buddy (then and now). . . right is Madison Todd, one of the four owners of Buddy

Yesterday late afternoon, I was laying on my couch in a semi-vegetative state.  I find myself fighting of an “everything virus” right now that has included about every symptom known to modern medicine (I will spare you of the details).

As I was laying there, dreaming of a healthy body, I got a text.  It was in Chinese and from a contact whom I identified simply as “Wang Rabbit Guy”.  He informed me that their newest rabbit was ready to be purchased.  I replied that I will be there tomorrow to pick the little guy up.

Let me explain . . . living in Asia in high-rise apartments, pets are often not an option for people.  However, children the world over still desire to have a small, cute, and breathing animal to care for and play with.  So, rabbits are a good substitute for dogs and cats in the midst of such cramped quarters.

In the city where I just moved from (and still return to once a month for meetings), most of my friends have children . . . all of which, naturally, want a pet.  Last year, I found a great little pet store/high school girl’s trinket shop.  Seriously.  The pet portion of the store has gerbils, spiders, guinea pigs, AND, you guessed it, RABBITS.  All animals which are easy to put in a corner in a flat.

Their rabbits are cute, domesticated, and cheaper than anything in my previous city.  After I gave “Buddy” to the Todd girls for Easter last spring, I am now fielding other request to purchase rabbits for families and bring them up to the other city. 

Back to my story. . .  I now have a rabbit guy. After completing yesterday’s texting session with “Wang Rabbit Guy”, I put the phone down, got back prostrate on my couch, and began thinking. [Read more…]

Glory in the Grind – contentment in the midst of “one of those days”

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John Gunter on his primary form of transportation
Left: me in happier times. . . Right: today at the shop

Today has been one of THOSE days.  You know the kind.  We all have them.  Nothing cataclysmically bad happened, but everything was just kind of off.

I woke up sick.  Nothing like a tumor or anything, just your garden variety flu like symptoms.  Not bad enough for me to find a doctor, but bad enough to make life really uncomfortable.  This seems to happen a lot to us foreigners living over here in Asia.  We will get a cough and it just won’t go away.  Months on end, we cough.  One day we notice it is gone, but we don’t really know why.  It seems like that is what is happening to my body right now.

I woke up to a broken clothes dryer.  It’s been broken for over a week, but today was the day the repairman was to come.  At least they said he would either be here yesterday or today, so I was hoping today would be the day he would actually show up (tomorrow begins a holiday and then all bets are off).

Thankfully he did get here today.  He arrived at noon, after telling me he would be here in the morning.  He fixed it and left, but there went a large chunk of this day, including a canceled lunch appointment.

I went out and got on my motorbike only [Read more…]

A Friday morning prayer through Proverbs 1:7

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A prayer of Proverbs 1:7 . . .

7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction (discipline).

Lord Jesus, thank you that you are the foundation of all knowledge.  You are the creator of all.  You know the exact number of hairs on my head and the days of my life.  You knew of the extent of my life before I was even conceived.  Thank you for such knowledge.

I was not there at the foundation of the world.  You were.  I was not the one whom poured the vary waters of the seas.  You were.  I did not hang the planets in orbit or the stars as ornaments of your glory.  You did.  Thank, Lord Jesus, for such knowledge is beyond my comprehension, yet not yours.  You truly are the foundation of all knowledge.

As true knowledge is from you and you alone, so is true wisdom.  Wisdom is forged and refined by time.  Wisdom is where knowledge, integrity, and persistence meet.

Wisdom is begun by knowledge of you and your ways.  It is lived out in [Read more…]

“If you shot for nothing, then you will hit it every time”

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JG.V.P.P._edited_2Planning is boring.  Planning is sometimes arduous.  The awkward few that do like planning are almost social scourges to the rest of the world that hate planning.  “There she/he is. . . the person that PLANS everything.”

However, everyday life and history point to the absolute need of planning on both the professional and personal fronts in life.

On the professional side, I am amazed when meeting with teams and organizations how few actually have plans, genuine thought out plans, of where they are going directionally.  Most can articulate “purpose statements” and inspiring vision pieces.  However, when you actually ask how this noble vision is going to take place, essentially how do you plan to accomplish this vision, vague and choppy explanations often ensue.

What will success look like for your organization/team this time next year?  In 5 years?  In 20 years?

In light of your purpose statement/vision, what needs to happen this week/quarter/year to get you going in this direction?

These and other questions are often followed by either bumbling, unintelligible answers or awkward silence.

One of the leadership clichés of which I often quote is, “if you shoot for nothing, then you will hit it every time.”  I know this is a little trite and simplistic, but [Read more…]

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