{"id":4181,"date":"2024-11-13T07:00:39","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T12:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4181"},"modified":"2024-11-13T07:01:56","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T12:01:56","slug":"the-richness-of-being-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/13\/the-richness-of-being-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Richness of Being"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>

If you visit the website of Occidental Petroleum (now known as Oxy), there\u2019s no mention of Armand Hammer in the official history of the corporation.

Do a search for his name and you\u2019ll get, \u201cNothing here matches your search.\u201d

That\u2019s remarkable, considering the fact Hammer was the CEO of Occidental for 35 years \u2013 right up to his death in 1992.

Hammer, who was a billionaire, had been enthusiastically profiled a few years earlier by 60 Minutes<\/em>, and USA Today <\/em>had called him a \u201cgiant of capitalism and confidante of world leaders.\u201d But his story wasn\u2019t quite as crisp and clean as he tried to let on.

At one point he hired ghostwriters to conjure up flattering, fictitious autobiographies of his life. 

He left behind a string of broken marriages; allowed his father to be jailed for a crime he committed; filed a claim of $667,000 against the $700,000 estate of his brother Victor, keeping the money from Victor\u2019s wife and kids; and hid from an illegitimate daughter. 

He had no friends at Occidental. 

Within days of Hammer\u2019s death, the company virtually disavowed any association with him. Hammer\u2019s pallbearers were his chauffeur, his male nurse, and a few other personal employees. Family members, including his only son Julian, chose not to attend. 

So here\u2019s the question: How many true-life accounts are going to be sufficient to convince us that accumulating money and power as a means to happiness is a bankrupt philosophy?

Theologian Miroslav Volf describes the two great alternatives for every human life. We can either pursue the Richness of Having or the Richness of Being. 

Unfortunately, most of us wonder whether we actually have to make that choice. We would love for the Richness of Having to lead to<\/em> the Richness of Being. If I just get enough stuff, or maybe the right kind of stuff, or the latest versions of the right stuff, my deepest yearnings for fulfillment will be satisfied.

But all of us know, from experience, that this is one of dumbest ideas of all time.

It doesn\u2019t help that our culture runs roughshod over the Richness of Being. 

Every year we publish lists of the wealthiest, the most beautiful, the most successful, the most honored, and the most driven people in the world. 

But nobody publishes Major League Grandmother cards \u2013 you know, the kind with the color picture on the front and the eye-popping statistics on the back: \u201cGrandma hung every one of my drawings on her refrigerator and said it was a masterpiece. She attended 98.2% of my school plays and concerts. And nobody on our block figured out more ways to make dinner with a package of noodles and two cans of Campbell\u2019s soup.\u201d  

Then there\u2019s I John 3:1: \u201cSee what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.\u201d There can be no greater honor for any human being.

Our world rarely celebrates the richness of lasting relationships that are powered by unconditional love. 

But that\u2019s where the real treasure is.<\/em>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here If you visit the website of Occidental Petroleum (now known as Oxy), there\u2019s no mention of Armand Hammer in the official history of the corporation. Do a search for his name and you\u2019ll get, \u201cNothing here matches your search.\u201d That\u2019s remarkable, considering the fact Hammer was the CEO of Occidental for… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[251,104,273],"class_list":["post-4181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-happiness","tag-love","tag-wealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4181"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4185,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181\/revisions\/4185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}