When I was still playing baseball, one of my favorite places on the field was the batting cages. It was a place of great solitude where I could work, sometimes endlessly, on the mechanics of my swing. I loved it for the feeling of working hard towards the goal at hand: to perfect an imperfect swing. Looking back, the hours and hours spent were not worth it because it produced a certain number of hits or success in the games, for many times it did not. Rather it was the process of preparation that made the cages so powerful. Without the cages, any accomplishment on the field that I experienced would have been less meaningful, because it would have come without knowledge of the sweat and blisters from the preparation.
I am now three and a half years removed from the last baseball game that I played and a full semester into my two year MBA program at Rice University. As the years have passed since I have placed the bats away in my closet, the more I realize that this preparation process that I love so dearly is not isolated to a batting cage. I have found that I enjoy Business School because the entire two year program is a 'preparation' for the next steps in our careers. Every class, test, teammate, company informational, and project brings value to our educational and leadership development. The pursuit of this new goal has been so enjoyable but if left to this end alone, it would be only temporal and superficial.
I know within my chest there is a desire to seek my own glory, honor, and wealth. This self-centered goal does not bring peace, but with it comes anxious preparation and the fear of failure. How small and short sighted my goal would be to pursue a MBA for only this one short vapor of a life I am living. Thankfully, the mercy of God in Christ is greater than my selfishness and sin, and I've been set free with new eyes and a new heart because of the cross. Because Christ has saved me from death, the passion I have to pursue excellence stems out of the desire to worship Him in all things.
One day Christ will make all things new (Rev 21:5); until then He is restoring the world to Himself, and it is for His glory that I want to be a part of that redemption, a part of that pursuit. Yes, my time in Business School will be spent preparing, learning, and growing...oh, but it will be for something so much more meaningful than that.
