Who do you know that you can simply count on? Ask them to do something, they say yes, and it is done — you never think about it again.
I have a friend named Bill Hanson who is one of the best caterers in the world. He is not cheap, but if Bill tells you he will deliver, consider it done. He has written a book about the business, not for the faint of heart, and it is full of disasters.
There was the time a worker at a hotel stumbled into the table holding the wedding cake, gashed his hand, bled everywhere and destroyed it — three hours before the wedding. Bill's people found a Publix that could put together a cake so close to the original that the bride never noticed.
My favorite is the bride whose wedding dress was stolen out of her car two hours before the ceremony. Bill called a woman in town who makes dresses. She made a substitute gown. The bride knew. Nobody else did.
Bill's motto is: I under-promise, I over-deliver. We call people like that second milers. They belong to the company of the second mile.
A new sheriff in town
This is a good text for the first Sunday of a new year. Here is Jesus taking the conventional wisdom — what everybody knows, what the religious leaders say — and turning it over on its head. There is a new sheriff in town, and his name is Jesus.
Think about the customer service at the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles — I don't even have to finish the question. You exist to serve us seems to be the posture there.
Not so with my people, Jesus says. My people go above and beyond.
Go against what the world tells you to do
You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you... If somebody slaps you on one cheek, turn the other.
Jesus said what? I don't know about you, but if somebody slaps me on one cheek, my first impulse is to turn to their other cheek and spin it around about 360 degrees at a high rate of speed. I know you are far too spiritual for that. Turning the other cheek and saying hit me again takes an extraordinary amount of restraint, and an extraordinary amount of the grace of God.
And here is what most people get wrong about eye for eye, tooth for tooth. It is not a prescription for vengeance; it is a limit on it. If you knocked out a man's tooth and he came looking for you, he could not push you off a cliff — he could take a tooth. The law existed to make the punishment fit the crime and go no further. The same God says later: you shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Some years ago I wrote about true greatness and profiled Nelson Mandela — who, on being elected president of South Africa, asked one of the men who had kept him twenty-eight years in prison to serve as his deputy, and seated his former jailers in the front row at the inauguration.
And then there is a man born to peasants in a nowhere town in the backwaters of Israel, who touched the outcast and the leper like nobody else would. Tortured to death on false charges, he looked down and said the ten most unbelievable words in human history: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Go above what the world tells you to give
There are two ways to live. One says: whatever you do for me is not enough, and whatever you ask of me is too much. Just enough to keep the job, just enough to say I'm a Christian. That is a reliable formula for a mediocre life, and the world will not be one bit different for their having been here. The other says that everything I have is a stewardship from God — and if he can use it in service to others, that is not a burden but a privilege.
My first indoor, sitting-down job was at a bank in Birmingham, Alabama. The man who hired me, Mr. Gilbert, was the CEO — after my father died he took an interest in me and opened doors. He said to me once: Kent, I have learned I can't out-give God. The more I earn, the more I give away, and the more he sends me.
Go farther than the world says to go
Will Guidara owns a restaurant in Manhattan called Eleven Madison Park, rated at one point the best in the world, and I heard him give a talk called Unreasonable Hospitality. The only thing I know about food is that I enjoy eating it — given a choice between a cooking show and watching paint dry, I would have to pray about it — but he had my full attention.
Four British tourists were eating there, working their way through New York. They mentioned that the one thing they had not managed was a hot dog off a street cart. So he went to the corner, bought what New Yorkers call a dirty water dog, and had his chef — much against the chef's wishes — cut it into four pieces and plate it on silver with elaborate garnish. At the end of the night they were not talking about the champagne. They went home and told their friends in England about the hot dog.
He does all that in the name of running a restaurant. So here is my challenge, on the first Sunday of 2026, with our lead pastor away for the next six or seven months. On Sunday mornings, look for the person sitting by herself, or the couple who look new. You are hereby deputized as our greeting committee. I don't care if you are an introvert. Pretend you are not.
If a mother shows up asking where children's ministry is, don't point. Walk her over. Same with the restrooms — don't point, say here, I'll show you. Take people by the hand, literally or figuratively.
God did that for us. He went far beyond what was required — became one of us, took us by the hand, and leads us into his own presence.
He did it for us. Is it asking too much that we do it for him?
