With years of experience in plant and operations management positions in industry-leading print, pre-press, and publishing companies, my awesome, big brother Donald specialized in process improvements. One of the biggest problems he tackled in those years was to create efficient and effective ways to eliminate financial loss due to the lack of communication within the movements of production.
Nearly twenty years ago now, I’m still remembering the day when he and I shared breakfast at the famous San Diego restaurant, The Old Town Mexican Café. An idea had been birthed in his mind to develop a software program that would eliminate wasted time, effort, product, frustration, and ultimately money. If there are twenty stations that a project must pass through to deliver a finished product – his software would ensure that every one of these stations would know what the last station did and what was expected for the next station. This product would be the solution for all printing companies. The guy who wrote the job order would know when to expect delivery. The boss would know what the cost and profit margins would be. Everyone would be satisfied because everyone would be connected during the procedures and everyone would be focused. Everyone would be working efficiently toward the same goal. No avoidable hindrances or loss. Production would go forward regardless of the lack of abilities at those individual stations. The program would ensure success.
To explain this to me, (a broad brush stroke kind of gal,) he grabbed a paper cocktail napkin, clicked the end of his ballpoint, and began to draw the diagram. I was impressed (as usual) with his incredible intelligence, insight, foresight, and enthusiasm as I watched his rendering and explanation unfold. And I remember silently saying to myself, I hope this all comes to fruition for him someday. Lofty dreams rarely do come true. Well, it did for him. So along with his partner, Chris (unbeknownst to him at that time who was learning to be a digital architect,) a software product was created exclusively for the printing industry. Their program would allow all the various stations in the process of creating a printed product to know what one another was doing. No surprises. They called it, JYBE. The tagline on their website is; Everyone Connected. Everyone Focused.
Webster’s spells it, jibe. It means; to be in accord. I’ve been dancing with this since he introduced it to me but never did it come together like it did today on a walk I was taking through my neighborhood on this sunny, fall day. Jibe.
A couple of weeks ago I began a series of Bible studies through the Book of Acts with my Bible study group, Rock Steady Sisters. This marks a monumental change in how God operates with men. It’s almost as if He gave to us a new software program and called it JIBE; everyone connected, and everyone focused. Never before could a human being be totally connected with God. Most of us know – well, we all should know that God is three personalities in one. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Previously, God, the Holy Spirit was a temporary gift to very selective people and exclusively to those who were of the Jewish faith. But now, in Acts – God the Holy Spirit is delivered to those who believed in Him. They didn’t have to ask for Him, they didn’t pray for Him to come. This event was a sovereign act of God. Nothing these 120 people said had any effect on the coming of the Holy Spirit. This was God implementing a new system into the lives of men. Everyone connected, and everyone focused. He designed it and He implemented it. None of this was contingent on the behavior of man. It was all God sovereignly interjecting His will into the world.
So, while I walked I got to thinking about my connection with God. As a believer, I know that the Holy Spirit lives inside of me. Ephesians taught me that. The first seventeen verses of Paul’s epistle address this but let me just highlight verses 13-14, “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”
What a thought. I’m walking down Adams Avenue and heading my way through the park and I’m mindful that it’s not just me, Diane, a solo human being making my way through this world, through my own timeline. But it’s me, Diane, a child of God who has a soul that is shared with God himself – the Holy Spirit. And we, Him and I, have a mission to accomplish as long as I am alive in this world. We are together on a movement of production. He’s working with me. Just the two of us on the production line and oh, my friends, what a blessing this is. I’m a station in the process of the production of His people. I get to (not have to) be a part of His sovereign plan.
I gazed over the horizon of the great Mission Valley and onto the afternoon sun washing over the northern land and there I was, this small person with a big mission. Not because of me, but because of Him – “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you so that you will love one another.” That’s it my friends. We don’t need to complicate it. “Bear His fruit, and love one another.” John 15:16-17
A million things are presented to us every day to divide and separate us but here Jesus is making it very clear – bear fruit and love one another. How can we do that? Jibe – the Holy Spirit is in us to connect us and draw us all to the same goal. The same project, the same process. To be in one accord.
Are you in? If not. Then the question becomes…..why not? There’s no better or safer or more joyful place to be. Jibe.
