Pursuit of Commendation (Part 1)

Scripture — Genesis 1:26-28

Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

Devotion

The Kauffman Foundation, under the Direction of DeAngela Burns-Wallace, selects 12 semifinalists every year who embody the spirit of Ewing Kauffman’s uncommon leadership through innovation, courage, and impact in their communities. (See https://www.kauffman.org/impact-award/2025-bios/). Keva Gorman from Prep-KC received commendation. They are a great organization. My organization, GreatJobs KC, gets to work by helping people in the Kansas City metro find ways to be fruitful and tend to God’s creation. Their efforts to embrace problems and seek answers have led to life-changing experiences and opened doors for people in the area.

If a faithful effort to change lives is built in the forest, does it make a sound?

There are all kinds of everyday people all over the world doing extraordinary things that may go unnoticed—real people and teams who silently serve those present and make themselves good ancestors, too. Is there commendation?
Our fast news cycle and affinity for the visual do not align well with the cultivation of creation. The story of loss, death, and market trends is easier to convey and keep the pace moving. That story drowns out the cultivating that is happening.

Leaders can feel that weight. They make faithful efforts to cultivate in a broken world, in all our personal frailty, sometimes in the form of forgetting that we are dust (Ps. 103:14). How does dust make anything, really? And how is it that dust desires commendation?

Before commendation and accolades, before ideation and group discussion, strategy, and roll-out, two questions should drive the entire process. Where did you get the desire to cultivate? And where did you get the resources to cultivate?
In the beginning God said, “let there/them/the” and things began to happen (Genesis 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 15, 20, 24). The blessed Trinity poured creation out of nothing. Then, from creation, God formed humanity, imprinted with God’s image, and breathed life into dust (Genesis 1:26-27). And God told humanity to be fruitful in relationship, steward creation, eat and rejoice, work and rest. A good start (Genesis 1:28-31).

The fall is a destructive counter to the main story—a broad road to a quick fix. But the disciple who leads knows that the Gospel makes us return to look beyond the sensational and human metrics. It is a slow, tedious journey of remembering that we only make and cultivate because we were made like this. And the danger of privilege is that it makes you forgetful. We make, lead, and create things from the ground we came from, too. We are only as fruitful as the sovereign “let there be” allows. Leaders are constantly reminding themselves not to let go of their childhood. “This is our Father’s world,” and he does, in fact, have the whole division, office, cubicle, and space in his hands.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Fruitfulness/Growth (Genesis 1:28; 2:15, 19-20).