Of "17 Items" and Taking Over the World...

Okay, so i had a dream last night that my boss (Rob Wegner) came into work with a new personal program he was excited about called "17 Items".  Basically, he had decided to very deliberately sit down at his desk each morning and determine the 17 absolute highest priority items that he needed to do, write them down on a task list numbered 1 through 17, and then machine-gun them until finished.  If he finished the 17 early, he got to go home.  If it took him till midnight, he was going to doggedly keep at it until complete.  I remember, in my dream, being inspired by his radical and energetic committment to the idea until i looked over his shoulder at his first list and it said things like "put on shirt", "brush teeth", "close front door".  Still, after waking, i remember wondering what my own "17 items" list might look like, and told Rob about my dream first thing this morning when we both arrived at work.  We both laughed at the notion that i would dream such things, and then set about our days.  

I left my desk for a few minutes, however, and when i returned to my computer, this was on my screen...

Rob had been busy at my terminal.  And if you can't read it, it says:

17 Items

1. Try to take over the world
2. Repeat
3. Repeat
   
4. Repeat
   
5. Repeat
   
6. Repeat
   
7. Repeat
   
8. Repeat
   
9. Repeat
   
10. Repeat
    
11. Repeat
12. Repeat
    
13. Repeat
    
14. Repeat
    
15. Repeat
    
16. Repeat
    
17. Go to sleep

You may or may not be familiar with Warner Brothers 1990's animated characters "Pinky and the Brain", but they're two lab mice who sort of function as defacto mascots for us here in the Life Mission Department.  Each episode featuring them revolves around one central scheme and one central line of dialogue.  It goes something like Pinky asking Brain "What are we going to do tonight, Brain?" and Brain always replying, "The same thing we do every night, Pinky... try to take over the world!!!"  In no small way, we're trying every day here to "take over the world" for the Kingdom of God.  Often we have the same kind of "anvil on your head" failure that other cartoon characters experience, and we're always cognizant that in the scheme of things, we're not much more visible than a couple of lab mice working away daily at our central mission.  But some days... and with more and more hope, we are part of something that is growing.  And we're increasingly aware that we're not the only "Pinkies" and "Brains" out there.  There are hordes of them, in fact, working every day to do the same things we're trying to do in bringing "Up There to Down Here" in real and tangible ways.  I call them Smart Zombies.  Are you one?