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The Christian Athlete

October 28, 2011 in Life in General with 0 Comments

I believe that God made me for a purpose. But He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure. – Eric Liddell

For those of you who don’t follow baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals won Game 6 of the World Series last night. This is a big deal. It was the most exciting game of baseball I’ve ever seen in my life.

But I’m not going to talk about that now (even though I could go on and on (and on) about it).

I want to talk about the Christian athlete.

After the game, as I was basking in the glow of victory. Or, more accurately, trying to absorb what I had just witnessed and hoping my blood pressure would soon return to normal, I left the TV on for post-game interviews. During the interview, Lance Berkman shared that he’s a Christian and he always prays for peace and focus before a game. That’s not an exact quote because I was distracted by something else at the time, but I think that’s reasonably close to what he said.

I liked Lance Berkman before that, and hearing him say that made me like him more.

We love our Christian athletes, don’t we? We (as Christians) are excited when we hear a great athlete is a Christian, and adopt him as our hero. He’s one of us, after all.

Of course, there are always the people who point out that there are preachers and missionaries faithfully laboring for Christ in difficult circumstances. They aren’t getting glory and ridiculously high pay. Those are the ones who deserve our honor. That’s valid. We are a society who prioritizes the wrong things. All humans tend to do this, as James warned us about in James 2:1-4.

I don’t think, though, that it’s wrong to wish Christian athletes well. If these men are our brothers in Christ, we need to encourage them (1 Thessalonians 5:11) and rejoice with them (Romans 12:15), not begrudge their success.

But we need to be careful. The Bible specifically lists what qualifies a man to be a leader in the church. I have no idea if Albert Pujols, Lance Berkman, or Adam Wainwright meet these requirements because I don’t know them. I know how they play baseball, but being able to hit home runs or throw strikes is not listed in the requirements for elders found in Titus 1:5-9. We should not assume that because they are Christians who are gifted in baseball that they should then anointed special Christian spokesmen.

Like it or not, though, they have been given a public stage. We should pray for them and encourage them, and not be shocked when they stumble. I have seen Pujols get snippy with reporters when he’s being pressed hard to answer for something he did on the field. He does have a temper.

But so do I. My failures are just more private. If reporters started shoving microphones in my face every time I snapped at my kids or burned supper, I would probably be snippy, too.

I took the following quote from the Pujols Family Foundation website:

People have said to me, “Albert, I would give anything to be able to play baseball like you.” They may look at my abilities and think that being a great baseball player is the goal of my life. Believe it or not, baseball is not the chief ambition of my life. Becoming a great baseball player is important to me, but it is not my primary focus. Because I know the Hall of Fame is not my ultimate final destination.

My life’s goal is to bring glory to Jesus. My life is not mostly dedicated to the Lord, it is 100% committed to Jesus Christ and His will. God has given me the ability to succeed in the game of baseball. But baseball is not the end; baseball is the means by which my wife, Dee Dee, and I glorify God. Baseball is simply my platform to elevate Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. I would also rather be known as a great husband and father than an All-Star baseball player. Perhaps one day I could be honored with an invitation into Baseball’s Hall of Fame. That would certainly be a boyhood dream of mine come true, but it is a far greater honor that one day I will be in heaven with God to enjoy Him forever.

A great testimony from an imperfect man and astounding athlete. I wish him well.


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In Which I Am Flagged as a Baseball Expert

October 25, 2011 in Life in General, Writing with 2 Comments

A week or so ago I received an invitation to submit posts to a group blog. A sports blog. Seeing as how I’m a sports blogger and all.

Yes, you read that right. Some sort of internet trolling mechanism and its Google mojo flagged me as a sports blogger. This triggered a generic email inviting me to contribute to a sports site. This was not The Sporting News casting a wide net in search of the next great sportswriter; this was a glorified internet forum drumming up more traffic. I can see how it would happen. I mention baseball from time to time. I have apparently mentioned it enough times to “trip the sensors” so to speak.

I do love the St. Louis Cardinals. One can hardly grow up 100 miles outside of St. Louis and not love them. Two of my brothers-in-law love them, too. Since the weird overlapping of generations in my family brought both of these brothers-in-law into the family before I turned eight, they influenced me in this the way brothers would.

So I root for the Cardinals. I understand the rules of the game, and I have a decent understanding of elementary baseball strategy, but I can’t imagine a life as a sports blogger. Beyond sharing my opinion that the Cardinals never drop the “birds on the bat” uniform, I can’t imagine having enough to say.

And yet a few random keywords were enough for a web crawler to flag me as a potential expert. Isn’t it funny, this internet.


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Thankful Thursday

October 13, 2011 in Life in General, Mercy of God, Thankful Thursday with 1 Comment

It’s been quite a week. If I had to name it, I would call it “The Week of the Plumber.”

Since you probably didn’t click on here to read the ends and outs of our home repair woes, I’ll try to explain this quickly.

We had repairmen here to repair drywall, who found a bigger problem in the crawl space (which we would have otherwise been oblivious to for quite some time). Between the two problems I have had repairmen here for the past five weekdays, with about 40 hours without water thrown in just for fun.

Today I am thankful for RUNNING WATER.

It’s amazing how many things we take for granted. Things that are actually luxuries feel like entitlements when we don’t have them. I was working on a Sunday School lesson on trusting God (Ezra 8:21-36) when Todd announced that he was going to have to turn the water off. Such a minor thing compared to traveling from Babylon to Jerusalem, but suddenly so much more real.

Anyway, everything is fixed. And today, as far as I know, anyway, no repairmen will be coming. I may celebrate by staying in my pajamas.

Today I’m joining my friend Kim and some other bloggers in listing something I’m thankful for.


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Status Update

October 5, 2011 in books, Life in General, Status Report with 2 Comments

Sitting… on the couch.

Listening… to my youngest son fidget in his seat. It’s hard to sit still and do subtraction at the same time.

Waiting… on the handyman who was supposed to be here an hour ago. We had a pipe burst in the wall a ways back, and while the pipe was repaired right away, we still need to have the drywall replaced.

Wondering… why we have so much trouble getting people to do work for us. I know everyone deals with late repairmen, but we have had some doozies. I had one man promise me he would come and do some work “by the end of the week” for six weeks straight. Finally I called his wife and started to cry (didn’t intend to talk to his wife — she just answered the phone. And I didn’t mean to cry, either; it just happened.) He came the next day. He wasn’t happy with me and still looks the other way when I run into him around town.

Anticipating… tonight’s baseball game. Will this be the end of the Cardinals’ season, or will they continue to the NLCS…and then on to the World Series?

Deciding… which project to tackle on Saturday. The garage or the office? Both are in a sorry state. The weather will probably decide for me.

Reading…Lit! by Tony Reinke. I just got started, but I think I’m going to like it.

Also reading…Hannah Coulter: A Novel (Port William) by Wendell Berry. This is the first Wendell Berry book I’ve ever read, and I’m thinking I should have started reading his books years ago.

Hoping… that the dogs don’t get too restless. We put them in their kennel because we thought the drywall guy was coming. I can tell they’re getting restless. This may be a long day.

Realizing… that the fidgeting at the kitchen table has now become rolling the pencil back and forth. Guess I better get up and help somebody refocus.



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Weekend Recap

September 19, 2011 in Life in General with 4 Comments

Whew!

I had a great weekend speaking at our church’s women’s retreat. The last few weeks have been crazy busy around here. Then I came down with a cold. And though I had been thinking about this conference since spring, I couldn’t seem to find the time to go from “rough outline in my head” to “final outline down on paper.” But on Friday morning the clouds parted, and I somehow found time to finish up my notes and make a handout and a slide slow (and pack and finish the laundry and get the family settled so I could leave). I don’t know how I managed all that in one morning, but I’m grateful.

My theme was “Viewing Our Struggles Through the Lens of the Gospel.” Matthew 6:22-23 was my anchor verse of sorts, but I mostly taught from the book of Habakkuk. Have you read Habakkuk lately? You should.

It was around 30 ladies and our very brave Worship and Media Arts Coordinator, Ryan Corn. Being the only male in that group is not for the faint of heart. He handled it well, but he cut out pretty quickly once he finished the music.

Talking about the Bible and worshipping through music is good, but just being together is good, too. We still found time to laugh a lot. It was nice to have time to just be together. To the left is a picture of the championship team of our own version of “Minute to Win It.” Oh, look, I was one the winning team!

A great weekend. Thanks, friends.


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All’s Well That Ends Well

June 2, 2011 in Just for fun, Life in General with 4 Comments

This post originally appeared in April 2007

Yesterday we cleaned out the garage.

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time (and if you have been, well, I’m sorry), you’ve probably realized that we do a lot of that.

That’s because we’re slobs, and we treat our garage like a giant trash can, and we have to shovel it out a couple of times a year.

BUT, we’re making so much progress. If it wasn’t for all of our bicycles we could fit BOTH cars in the garage. It’s a sight to behold.

Present in this garage clean, though, were a box for a stove, a washer, and a dryer (it’s been a very bad year, appliance-wise). We kept them because the kids like to play in them, but appliance box houses lose their appeal after a couple of rainstorms. We are only allowed three bags of trash per week, so big boxes get sent to the burn pile.

And thanks to the enthusiastic tree-trimming Theodore did with his new chain saw in the fall, our burn pile was REALLY big.

I explained to Theodore that it would be a really good day to burn. He didn’t think so. I explained a little more forcefully that this would REALLY be a good day to burn. There was no wind. The sky was blue. We have had ample rain lately, there was no good reason why he couldn’t burn.

It was agreed that I would take the load to Goodwill, and he would burn the burn pile.

I was gone forty minutes.

About a half mile from our house, I met our neighbor at a stop sign. She gave me a really strange look. I didn’t know what it meant.

Then I got home.

The huge pile of brush was a pile of ashes. Our two oldest were in the back yard washing off with a hose. Our youngest was trembling and clutching a mug of lemonade. And Theodore was missing most of his right eyebrow.

It appears that it was only an almost wind-free day. But there was a lone gust of wind that occurred when the flames where at their highest. And the gust was strong enough to set the row of 15-foot high hedge maples on fire.

And our youngest child, who doesn’t like loud noises, strong winds, or the Happy Birthday song, apparently doesn’t like to see a row of trees go up in flames, either.

Theodore managed to put out the fire with our garden hose. He says he was seconds from telling Peter to call 911 before he got it under control. Theodore refuses to go to a restaurant on his birthday for fear he will get sang to. The fact that he was contemplating calling firetrucks with sirens to descend on our house is really saying something.

I know what my neighbor’s look meant. It was clearly a look that said, “I bet she doesn’t realize her husband just tried to burn the neighborhood down.”

As for Theodore, he’s fine too. A little singed in places, but that’s all.

I think I’ll let him decide when to burn the brush pile from now on.


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You Don’t Know the Half of It

June 1, 2011 in Life in General, Mercy of God with 0 Comments

This post originally appeared in 2009.

So yesterday morning, first thing, I spilled an entire cup of coffee on my gray carpet. That was the beginning – a small thing, really – but it happened, and I went on with my day.

The older I get, the more I come to realize that most of the time we really don’t know the whole story. There are a million choices and circumstances in every person’s life that lead up to the moment we’re in.

You see, in the middle of my work day, I found myself at cross purposes with a person at the other end of the phone.

My side of the story is that I had a problem, and I felt that if I could just talk to somebody about it, I could potentially save the people she works for a few headaches later on.

Her side is that she works for a company that has a lame, ineffective method for dealing with problems. She didn’t make the policy, but she’s getting paid minimum wage to answer the phone and explain it over and over again, and then listen to a bunch of people tell her that THEIR problem is different.

She didn’t know that I have a head cold, a fresh coffee stain on my gray carpet, and am dealing with a situation that truly warrants making an exception.

But what pieces of this puzzle am I missing? Did she make an exception last week only to get reprimanded for it? Is she tired of taking a bunch of flack for something she can’t control? Did she spill her coffee on WHITE carpet yesterday morning?

I’ll never know.

It’s funny how quick I can be to rush to judgment when I really don’t know the whole story. Is that mother caving to a cranky toddler’s tantrum in the candy aisle really raising a spoiled brat, or is she functioning on two hours sleep, trying to get a child with a double ear infection home so she can give him his medicine?

Why do I assume I could do better, when in reality most people are just doing the best they can?

So back to the lady on the phone. I should have just hung up the phone, filled out the proper form, and saved my irritation for the people who could actually DO something about it. She didn’t need my condescending sigh and snarky “Thanks for nothing.” It didn’t solve the problem at hand, cure my cold, or get the coffee stain off my carpet.

She, on the other hand, could have taken the high road. She could have just accepted my apology, gotten off the phone, and maybe turned to a coworker and commented that some people just don’t have any manners. But instead, she decided it was HER turn to vent.

So what should have been a short, civil phone conversation degenerated into a snippy exchange that left me feeling irritable for the rest of the day. It consumed much more of my energy than it deserved.

Have I mentioned that I don’t handle conflict well?

She’ll never know that I’m usually not so rude. And I’ll never know if she’s really a nice person caught at a bad moment, or a mean person who tortures puppies in her spare time.

So today is a new day, right? I don’t work today, my calendar is clear, and I decided to indulge in my freedom and nurse my lingering head cold by lounging around in my pajamas, reading, and letting the kids watch a movie before we started school.

A few simple choices that found me standing in my normally private backyard at 9:15, in my nightgown, hair askew, letting the dog out.

And face to face with the meter man.

The meter man who I’m fairly certain is a customer where I work. I can’t say for sure, though, as I was too busy backing into my house, trying unsuccessfully to shield myself with a twelve-pound dachshund.

I should have just looked him in the eye and said, “You don’t know the half of it.”

Tomorrow I’m going to try POURING the coffee on the carpet.


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Status Report April

April 4, 2011 in Just for fun, Life in General with 3 Comments

Sitting…in the office. The light bulb burned out a few days ago, so I really ought to change it. The only light is the glow of the computer screen.

Drinking…hot green tea. I had to get into my late thirties before I realized that I like peas and green tea. Not necessarily at the same time (but that would be okay).

Listening…to the washer and dryer. The office is really half of the laundry room and used to be a storage area. I’m also listening to the rattle of Legos in the family room/play room/school room right outside the office.

Pondering…yesterday’s Sunday school lesson, sermon, and the ideas of extroversion and introversion.


Reading…
God’s Plans for You by J.I. Packer. This is a re-read, and only because I picked it up and noticed that I had marked in it extensively yet had no recollection of anything it said. It turns out I even reviewed it three years ago. Go figure.

Anticipating…the Gospel Coalition Conference.

Smiling…about this fun and encouraging Vlog on The Organized Heart. The kids found it kind of surreal to see somebody talking about their mother and kept asking, “Mom, do you know her?” Then they returned to what they were doing without giving it much more thought.


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Meanwhile…

March 22, 2011 in Just for fun, Life in General with 1 Comment

A comment the other day made me realize I was giving an impression that the weather was still bad here.

Let me give you an update. It’s lovely. Here’s a picture I snapped with my phone during my run on Sunday:

My only problem with spring is that it’s inevitably followed by summer. But I’m trying not to think about that right now.


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Learning Contentment in Lousy Weather

March 10, 2011 in Life in General with 3 Comments

Started out this morning writing a post about spring soccer season. We have two soccer games tonight. The temperature at gametime is going to be 40 degrees Fahrenheit (which I believe is 4 degrees Celsius for all my Canadian friends). It’s rained daily for the last month (okay, that’s an exaggeration, but it feels that way), so it’s going to be muddy, too.

The Rare Jewel of Christian ContentmentI am not happy about that. But I guess I felt guilty about my discontent, because then I delved into this long explanation of Stoicism and laments in the Psalms and how my complaining about the weather shouldn’t really count as complaining. I tried to appeal to Jeremiah Burroughs in The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, where he says contentment “is not opposed to making an orderly manner our moan and complaint to God, and to our friends.”

And I was 500 words into all this when I realized I was talking about soccer and I really just needed to get over myself. Some people have real problems. And though the time when I had to sit and watch soccer in the sleet it felt like a real problem (that was three years ago, but I’m still bitter), it really wasn’t.

So. Soccer tonight. I wish it was going to be 75 degrees, but it won’t be. And God has a good reason for that, I just don’t know what it is. But I do know that it’s not all about me, even if I try to pretend that it is.


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