Questions

Questions can be good, but not all questions are helpful.

At the end of a year, or at the beginning of a new year are good times to look at where we are at, where we want to be, and where we are going.

Are we making progress toward our goals? Have we sabotaged our mission or just how are things working?

I am reminded occasionally how important it is to ask the right question.

At one point we were looking to expand our truck farm business with possible a hybrid-hydroponic greenhouse. We scrutinized all the material about this particular model. We looked over everything we could find on it and even flew to Florida to see the working model.

We eventually signed on the dotted line and...after all the questions we asked and answers we got the main question should have been how many of these greenhouses are up and how much profit are they making—now. Not just 'projected'.

We came upon this discovery when about May we had much of our greenhouse up, but we didn't have any plants producing for produce for sale. We began receiving phone calls asking for our endorsement of the system.

Being honest people I told them we didn't have any business from it yet, but the one that ended the phone calls was when a handicapped woman from some southwestern state called wanting to know if she could handle the system.

Needless to say I didn't give her a recommendation. While it was billed as 'hands-off horticulture', it was not cheap (by this time the developer had upped his price several thousand dollars) and it wasn't hands-off at all, and I felt it unconscionable to try to dupe a handicapped person.

We didn't get any more 'calls' after that, and it always reinforces in my mind, Learn to ask the right question.

"But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil." (Ephesians 5:13-16 KJV)