I don't want to be a COUNTERFEITER

Yesterday was a challenge......it was one of those days where the challenges that were known...well, they were known.

It was actually stepping into the great unknown that was the biggest challenge. Yep, that's right, I had some surprises. Welcome to life....right?

Human instinct kicks at this point, I usually do everything possible I can do to stop the "unwelcome" surprises and embrace the "known" so life is not so.......surprising. correct?

I read an article about Swiss watchmakers that made me think about how I am dealing with the challenge of "the great unknown" in my life.

Here is what I read:

Switzerland exports 26 million watches a year, but counterfeiters ship 40 million, reports Christina Binkley in the Wall Street Journal (10/16/08). Even more troubling, “counterfeiters have been improving their technology faster than watchmakers,” too. It used to be the fakes were easy to spot, but not always anymore. “The counterfeiters have learned all the things that people didn’t know 20 years ago,” says David Hendry, an expert.

To combat this, “one Swiss watchmaker, Vacheron Constantin, has created a wristwatch that it says is impossible to counterfeit.”

“Tiny texts on the dials of some models — illegible without the aid of a magnifying glass.” Certain images, such as a tiny sun, “can be seen only under a UV lamp,” and even then only barely. Will this be enough to stop counterfeiters? Even the watch’s designer, Roger Pfund, “an acclaimed painter and designer of the Swiss passport” doesn’t think so. “They already have fakes of this watch,” he says. “Of course the movement is wrong — a lot of things are wrong.”

I have bought "fake" watches before. One day my wife and I were in New York and I bought her a Rolex (in Chinatown). It was beautiful! It had the signature Rolex logo and it even had a "sweeping" second hand, the Rolex "signature" because everyone knows regular "inferior" watches just tick on each second. (hey, I may be a cheapskate buying a fake watch but I paid extra for the "sweeping" hand technology!)

The next day we were flying home and we got to about 20,000 feet and the watch stopped. I guess it didn't like heights:-(

A few days later my wife took it to a jewelry shop thinking the battery might have died. The jeweler opened the watch and said, "I hope you did not pay to much for this watch, it is full of sawdust".

Here is the lesson I am learning; when things get hard and the great unknown is in front of me it would be a lot easier to take the short cut, do the "counterfeit" thing and everything will look beautiful on the outside.....at least for a while.

The hard thing is to do the real thing, the original, the thing that is going to last even when life takes us to 20,000 feet above sea level or even 20,000 feet below!

By the way, this is the point I wake up and run to the source...God. This is when it really helps to know the Artist, the Creator, the Maker of all of the originals, who does nothing that is counterfeit.

The more challenging your circumstances, the greater your opportunity to see God raise you to new levels of living. When life is overwhelming, it provides the context for you to experience something truly breathtaking. After all, if the earth were flat, there would be no mountains to climb. - Erwin McManus