On Sunday, I watched the Eagles play the Cowboys. As a long-time Redskins fan, I have two favorite teams in the NFL – Washington and “whoever is playing Dallas.” As such, I was in “hog-heaven” watching the Cowboys get beat by the Eagles. With less than two minutes left in the game, Brian Westbrook broke away for what looked like a touchdown run. However, rather than scoring, he stopped on the one-yard line and downed the ball. This allowed Philadelphia to keep the ball for the rest of the game and removed any chance, however remote, that Dallas could have won the game. One of the commentators made the remark that there were several “fantasy owners” out there who were unhappy with Westbrook since the whole fantasy concept is built around individual performance and stats rather than team wins and losses. I have been playing fantasy football for a couple of years now. In fact, I have been league champion two out of the last three years. Westbrook got me to thinking though about how many people would have been willing to give up personal glory for the team, especially in the “me” culture of today. My fantasy team didn’t make the playoffs this year, and I have been considering quitting fantasy for a couple of years. I didn’t enjoy the glorization of individual achievement. On Sunday, Westbrook corked the deal. I will root for teams from now on – go Skins – and individuals who are do what they do for the teams and not themselves. In a world of steroids and NFL hoodlums, it is really refreshing to see a demonstration of what sports is all about. Thank you, Brian Westbrook.
Month: December 2007
Thank you God
It started raining just after noon on Saturday and continued raining until early this morning. The TV weatherman said that we got a couple of inches of rain, and then said that this amount of rain did nothing to ease the drought. It is a start, however, and I want to thank you God for the rain that He sent in response to many, many prayers. And to you, young weather guy, you need to learn a little bit of gratitude and not to use “out there” so much. Both are really aggravating.
Steroids and Viagra – Better Men through Chemistry
Well, the report on steroid use in major league Baseball is out, and it ain’t pretty. Some of the biggest (pun intentional) baseball names are mentioned as steroid users. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. In a culture where men sit around and sing on television,about a drug that corrects erectile dysfunction and makes men better lovers, young people on bicycles advertise for a drug that prevents the spread of herpes from an “infected” partner to an “non-infected” partner as long as one is careful (how did you get herpes to begin with?), and young boys’ behavior “problems” are corrected with ritalin, how can we be surprised when drugs are used to make baseball players better baseball players? Remember the old Dupont ad (I think it was Dupont): better living through chemistry.
Say It Ain’t So
According to Major League Baseball, the report on steroid use in baseball will be released at 2pm this afternoon. In that report, there will be a list of names of baseball players involved with steroids. This list supposedly will include many all-star and MVP names. Could it be that Barry Bonds is “normal” in baseball? I haven’t watched a NBA game in years, haven’t completely watched an NFL game in a long time, but I did watch baseball. I hope that I haven’t been watching a bunch of overpaid, pampered, spoiled, drugged men playing a child’s game.
God, Cancer, and the Drought
In the Wednesday morning Bible class a couple of weeks ago, the discusssion turned to the subject of bad things happening to good people. Specifically, the question was asked, “do you believe that God could cause a four-year old to die of cancer?” The group responded with the obligatory modern answer that God was not that cruel and/or capricous. My immediate answer was to differentiate between God and cancer by answering that the cancer killed the child, not God. But somehow, that answer, while cute, was not a real answer. The main question was still unanswered. Did God cause ______(you can fill in the blank with any disease or disaster you desire)? I went to the Episcopal Prayer Book and the Bible looking for the answer and found none. The book of Job in the Old Testament addresses this problem, but never answers it. Job, in the middle of his suffering, is called carpet by God and told that he is not worthy to question the providence or power of God. So, I am let to handle the question on my own. My answer, and I have been upbraided by several fellow Christians, is “yes, God did.” If God is omnipotent, then He is in charge of everything and everything is under His control. If He is not in charge, then why do we pray? If God doesn’t control the universe and hence the world, why do we waste out time requesting that He become involved in this world by curing illness or protecting loved ones. I believe that He is in control. I also believe that I, as a human, will never understand this control or the purpose of events that are tragic. I can only have faith that “all things work together for good to them tht love God, to them that are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). An interesting article was posted by Chuck Colson on his website addressing this concept and the drought in the Southeast. Not quite the same as cancer and children, but it calls for us to define just how serious we are about our relationship to God.
A Message from God?
Last Sunday morning during our devotional time together, Patty and I read from 2 Kings 4, the story of Elisha providing food to the prophets in the midst of a famine.
Ironically, as we opened our Bibles, the local newspaper was lying on the coffee table. The headline read, “Spring Crop Reduced as Drought Fear Grows.” As everyone in America knows, there is a serious drought here in the Southeast, where Patty and I have a home—crops affected, water supplies dangerously low.
In our Bible study we were directed to read Leviticus 26:3-5, “If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit.” Later in the study we read Amos 8:11, “The days are coming, declares the sovereign Lord, when I will send a famine through the Land, not a famine of food or a thirst of water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.”
For months I have been wondering if this drought is God’s judgment. Last Sunday, I put the Bible down and said, “Okay, Lord, I get it.”
But why, you ask, would the Lord send a drought on the American Southeast? That is the Bible belt: the highest per capita church attendance in America.
Well, think about it. The Scriptures, in my opinion, do not speak to a secular nation like America; they speak to God’s people. The Old Testament was addressed to Israel; the New Testament speaks to the New Israel, the Church.
Now, I hesitate to say that God has said this or that, for fear of being presumptuous—or maybe even being dismissed as a crank. But I cannot get the thought out of my head. Sunday’s newspaper and our assigned Bible study, I suppose, could have been a coincidence, but I do not think so. I think God is speaking to the Church—notice I did not say America—today.
So what is He saying? That we have been disregarding His Word. That we have been going to church to make ourselves feel good and have our ears tickled. That therapy has replaced truth. There is more than a drought; there is a famine of reading and living by the Word of God.
I think God is telling His people to repent, to get serious about what we believe, to hunger for the Word of God, to seek holy living, and to ask God’s forgiveness.
We need to repent, as well, for not applying God’s Word, and repent for looking for a political savior while neglecting the true Savior. We need to repent for blaming our nation’s moral collapse on the gay-rights movement, or on the media, or on the politicians, and look right at the people whom God expects to know better—those who call on His name: you and I.
Thank God there are leaders who are now getting it and speaking out, like Bill Hybels, who two weeks ago publicly repented for failing to make disciples in his church. Others need to follow Bill’s lead.
Whether or not the drought is God’s judgment—and I cannot help but believe it is—I do believe He is speaking to us loudly. Turn from our smug, contented ways, and let waves of repentance sweep over our churches.
Everybody is worried today about climate change. Well, the first step in fixing it is to get on our knees.
We Remember
It is the soldier, not the reporter,who has given us freedom of the press.It is the soldier, not the poet,who has given us freedom of speech.It is the soldier, not the campus organizer,who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.It is the soldier, not the lawyer,who has given us the right to a fair trial.It is the soldier who salutes the flag,who serves under the flag,and whose coffin is draped by the flag,who allows the protestor to burn the flag.by Father Denis Edward O’Brien
Hyphenated Americans
Why I am not an Anglo-American, and won’t use the term African-American: Teddy Roosevelt once said that “The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic.” Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt also advocated the acceptance of English by naturalized Americans as one big way to become a part of the American “melting pot.” Of course, today, “diversity” is the vogue, and the “melting pot” idea has become as passe as having sex only after marriage and men acting as fathers rather than sperm-donors. (See another hyphen.)
Answering A Stupid Question
In response to a story about the shooting at the church in Colorado, one of the more intelligent citizens of Colorado questioned why a church needed an armed security guard. Read the story, Einstein, the guy killed two innocent people before he was shot by the guard preventing more carnage. That’s why they had the guard. Of course, the writer of the post then continued its rant against Christianity and all its supposed sins. I do wish that those who wish to make that list would quit blaming the American church for the Crusades…wrong century, wrong continent. The American Church has plenty to answer for, but please drop the Crusades and the Inquisition. Think on your own when you make one of those lists. Be intellectually honest and don’t copy tripe.
Quote from the BoldColorConservative Blog
Our troops today are no less brave and our enemies no less evil. That is why we should supply our men and women in uniform with the latitude and resources that they need to defeat Islamo-fascism with the same fervor and finality as Nazi Germany.
Christmas Concert
Last night, the Macedonia and Warren Baptist Churches in Augusta, Georgia, combined their choirs and gave a refreshingly apology-free Christ-centered Christmas concert. Macedonia is a historically black Baptist Church and Warren is historically white. On this one night, the two churches put aside their differences and sang of the birth of their Lord. What a wonderful sight to look around the James Brown Coliseum and see a sea of salt and pepper-the spices of our Lord Savior Jesus Christ. As Martin Luther King, Jr. observed, “the hour between 11 and twelve is the most segregated hour in America.” Let us pray that that changes. Maybe the church as a whole should learn how to handle race before it takes on homosexuality.
Red Clay and Sand 