“I tell you the truth, when you were young; you were able to do as you liked”

Today is the day.  Facebook goes public and we will see if they can garner the $104B market valuation they desire, making it the largest single initial public offering in history.  Where I live here in Silicon Valley there has been a palpable buzz all week. And today is the day.  Today, Facebook grows up.  Today, for the first time in the company’s history the focus of employees won’t be on the product or the number of users but instead in the number behind the stock symbol, “FB”.  From this point on the price of the stock will become an interest for all and an obsession for most inside the company. Back in the late ’80’s I was a part of PepsiCo becoming the first Fortune 500 company to provide stock options to all employees.  All 450,000 employees, other than those in countries where stock options were illegal, received “Share Power Grants”.  The idea was to align the entire company from CEO to Hourly employees with a common measure.  It was exciting and it lasted for many years.  And then over time the stock price stopped increasing, the small number of shares that someone received were not meaningful any longer, employees started to realize that the company and themselves could be performing extraordinarily and because of macroeconomic forces the stock price would stay down, and employees lost hope and faith in the program. It will be awhile before that happens to Facebook employees but all of the ramifications of having a public measure that matters to an employees checkbook is a growing up pain that Facebook is now certain to experience.

Where we establish our measures and fix our eyes for a prize is important as we grow up spiritually. When we were young in spirit, we may not have been able to let go of many of the parts of the of the world that we think establish our identity and self-esteem.  But, if we are growing and facing up to this maturation process, then we will get better and better at discerning those things that are in God’s will and are moving the Kingdom forward, and those that aren’t. We are bombarded with the messages to care about the opposite. Let’s today, as we take measure, be sure that we are fixed on and staying consistent on the things of the Kingdom and the disciplines that He has given us to exercise.


Reference: John 21:18 (New Living Testament)