Forward is Sometimes Back

We just learned a small lesson at the office today. My friend, worship leader, and office assistant, Joey, was working on our computer to get it prepped for our Sunday service. We've been having an issue with the PowerPoint files not looping for our announcements. Now we all know that if it were a Mac, we wouldn't be having such issues, but unfortunately, we're still stuck with a PC in the booth. Joey did research, uninstalled stuff, researched some more, read posts, tried this, and tried that. Nothing. It still wouldn't work.

I came up with a crazy idea. How about we just uninstall PowerPoint 2007 and just go back to the solid standby version of PowerPoint 2003 which was working just fine before this. Ok, let's try it. Joey uninstalled 2007 and reinstalled 2003, and it works like a charm.

Why do I tell you this story? To get every one of you to throw your PC out the window of at least a two-story window and go to your nearest Apple store and buy a new legit computer they call a Mac? NOPE. That's not why I tell you this. I came up witha quick, short, yet profound take away from Joey's journey with the PC.

"Sometimes the best thing you can do to move forward is to go back."

We don't often talk about this because "going back" is perceived as a negative. If you go back, then you're admitting defeat; or you're not willing to do what it takes to move forward; or you're just flat out a whimp. Not true. Sometimes we think that moving ahead is always the right thing to do. What we sometimes find out and what we discovered today is that sometimes after you've moved forward in a direction you realize that going back makes the most sense. Maybe it's because you went in the wrong direction in the first place and now need to go back to your starting point. Maybe it's at that place you refocus and move again.

In no way do I think going backward is the normative behavior. However, at times, it's exactly the right thing to do.