In the Zone

Today is almost like a holiday for me.  It's vacation-eve.  To celebrate, I wanted to give you a sampling of what I've read the past six months. In the past, I've done this list just prior to Christmas.  However, between seminary and my own personal reading, my book reading has grown exponentially.  So, with no lesson on the schedule for this week and my mind halfway on vacation already, I decided to put this list for your perusal. My goal in doing this annually is two-fold.  1.  I want you to see what I'm reading.  2.  I want to give you some ideas for either personal reading or as gifts for Father's Day, Anniversaries, or even for vacation.  As always, this will not be a comprehensive list.  It's just some books I want to highlight that I hope you are interested in as well. Just a note, for the first time I can remember, I'm now reading most of my books in the Kindle format.  Of the books I list below, only two w...

The worst natural disaster damage I ever witnessed came from flooding in Eastern Kentucky a few years back. One day, consecutive thunderstorms unleashed 4 inches of water in a short period of time over the same exact areas.  The results were catastrophic.  Creeks burst out of their beds, creating a massive, flowing wall of water that simply erased the landscape.  I remember driving down the road in the aftermath.  On the right hand side, piled up against a grove of trees, mobile homes sat stacked on each other, as if a giant hand swept them all into the woods.  Those living structures were no longer inhabitable.  Eventually, they were removed and sold for scrap. Those mobile homes had no solid foundation.  They sat on concrete slabs, but had nothing anchoring them to the ground.  When the water came, they becamse easy targets to be swept away in the roaring flood waters.  Nothing held them in place, so they became a huge pile next to ...

The soccer season is over...for me anyway. Yesterday, I coached the last game of the season for our U4 soccer team.  I'd love to tell you we scored the winning goal in the last few seconds and parents carried me off the field on their shoulders.  I'd love to, but I can't.  It didn't happen. In fact, it, like almost all of our games this season, didn't go well at all.  They don't keep score in our league (thank goodness), but if they did, it would have been a lot to a little.  We didn't have the lot.  Our kids tried hard, but we just didn't have the confidence to strike the ball and take on defenders.  We were often short-handed.  Short attention spans ruled the day. To be honest, I spent most of the season frustrated.  I talked and coached and demonstrated and talked some more.  In practice the kids would do fine.  In games, not so much.  I spent more time yelling for kids to stop picking grass and stay out of the goal th...

For my seminary class on counseling, I had to read a book about anxiety and worry.  In the book, the author, Archibald Hart, made the case that sometimes worry can be good. He gave the example of worrying about an illness - in the case a spot on the skin that could be cancerous.  Since skin cancer is a very real, and deadly, possibility, your worrying about it should spurn you to have it examined.  In that case, it's a healthy form of worrying.  It's more natural concern than worry, even when we dwell on it.  It's our brain's mechanism to check out anomalous things. For me, Matthew 7:21-23 is one of those "spots" you need to worry about.  In the passage, Jesus says many people who drive out demons, preach, teach and do miracles will not gain access into the Kingdom of Heaven.  They'll have all the outward signs of a believer but have no real, genuine relationship with Jesus Christ. That's a very scary proposition.  It addresses those of us...

Now, I’m starting to get angry. Earlier this week, Jason Collins, an NBA journeyman, came out of the closet in a Sports Illustrated cover story.   He was universally praised on every radio, television and talk show.   He was overwhelming supported on Twitter and Facebook.   Chris Broussard, an ESPN NBA writer, when asked directly about it on ESPN, said he believed homosexuality – any sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman – was a sin.   Immediately, calls came in for his suspension.   He’s been labeled a bigot, out of touch and wrong. Excuse me?   It’s OK to flaunt how great of a decision Jason Collins made but it’s not OK to disagree?   When did sharing your faith and beliefs become a crime against humanity? More and more, I grow concerned about the tone of our country.   No one is allowed to disagree.   No one is allowed to share their beliefs or faith.   You’re either OK with gay rights, open relationships and si...

Jason Collins, a 34-year-old center who played in the NBA last season, came out as gay in a national spread in Sports Illustrated. Supposedly, he's the first active athlete in a major US sport to be openly gay.  Jason Collins, a journeyman NBA center - a man who two weeks prior would be fairly unrecognizable by the general public - was suddenly the face of the gay movement.  His name and face showed up everywhere.  ESPN, Sports Illustrated, all the major networks, and every national publication wrote or aired stories about this "momentous" day. Following the article, pundits on ESPN, writers from Sports Illustrated, athletes in other sports and virtually any sports related Tweeter, jumped on the bandwagon.  All offered their congratulations and adulation for his decision.  Everyone who weighed in on the story had nothing but praise. People on Twitter were inundated with positive tweets for Collins and his decision on their time lines.  W...