Our habit of not looking up …

Starting a small business can be tough to do successfully.

In fact, according to the Small Business Administration, 30 percent of all new businesses fail within the first two years, 50 percent within the first five years, and 66 percent within 10 years of launch.

One of the key reasons for failing is lack of adequate startup capital … not enough money to keep paying the bills before finally becoming profitable. Because of this very real issue, new business owners are always looking for a way to minimize their costs. One simple step many new business people take that most of us never notice is having an unfinished ceiling inside their places of business.

It used to be that all the cost for having a finished ceiling would be paid, until someone figured out that really isn’t necessary … because of our habit of not looking up.

Instead of putting in a false ceiling to cover over wires and pipes, etc., today it is common to simply paint or color everything in the ceiling so that it doesn’t draw any attention, but otherwise leave it unfinished. Take for example, the photo above, which demonstrates what I’m talking about. That’s a photo taken inside a Starbucks store. Starbucks is an international corporation that certainly has the money to put in false ceilings in all their locations, but they save a lot of money by not doing so. But by having everything colored in a way that doesn’t attract attention, people don’t look up and think, “Hey, that ceiling is not finished.”

We have a habit of not looking up because we have a greater habit of keeping our eyes on what surrounds us. In ways, that can be a problem. By looking only and constantly at what’s immediately around us, we can miss the “bigger picture” — and a more important one.

The same is true for life.

That’s why the Apostle Paul encourages us to develop a habit of looking up …

“Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God,” Colossians 3:1-3.

There’s a saying that some people are “so heavenly-minded they’re no earthly good,” but that really can’t be said for most of us. What’s too often the reality is that we so rarely look up that we’re overwhelmed with an earthly mindset by constantly looking at what’s going on around us. It’s by developing a habit of “looking up” that we can then rightly assess what’s going on around us.

Have you set your sights on the realities of heaven? Or are you too distracted by earthly matters?

Scotty