Is Your Life Converging?

Several years ago in one of those memorable and defining conversations I've had over the years with Steve Fry the term convergence came up. As I nodded my head in agreement I was in over drive trying to figure out what it meant and how it applied to what Steve was saying to me.
Steve was feeding back to me a time in my life where several experiences, meetings, and opportunities I had in the past were leading to one fantastic door of opportunity opening up for me. The dictionary defines convergence as, "to reach the same point coming from different directions". Steve was commenting on how a few seemingly differing events I had in life were coming together for a greater good.
I think of the story of Joseph in the Old Testament who once having a visionary dream lived a life of conflicting experiences. Belittled by his brothers, sold into slavery, bought and promoted into great responsibility by Potiphar, lied about, put into prison, forgotten and ascended into ultimate political power. Each step of the way Joseph's life in the natural could have gone into directions unimaginable. Death, abuse, discouragement, humility, arrogance, bitterness, hatred, compromise on and on. But the unifying element through it all was Joseph's seemingly unyielding faith in God. The circumstances and people around Joseph did not have the ultimate say in his life God did.
Whether the individual is of spiritual faith or not, human beings who failed but rose from the 'pit' as did Joseph have this one thing in common...convergence. An ability to pull all their experiences together, both bad and good, and embrace them as part of the journey that would lead them to their destiny and contribution in life. Convergence is not only a seemingly fatalistic or Providential occurrence but a perspective a worldview that shouts, "in all things God works together for good"!
If you were to create a timeline of your life accentuating the highs and the lows what would they be pointing to? What have they formed and shaped in your life so that you are now honed to invest in ways that have a multiplying effect? How has your perspective or worldview been affected? Does it need an overhaul? Does it embolden you to continue to move forward? To risk? To achieve?
All of life presents to us the opportunity to, as Anthony Mayo and Nitin Nohria of Harvard Business School say, live life with vision, integrity, perseverance, courage, innovation, and risk taking ability. The one thing their research has discovered that pulls all these essential attributes together is the ability to see the opportunities through the haze of life and take advantage of them for the greater good.



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