In the Zone

When I was a newspaper reporter, we used to have this kind of unofficial contest among the news office.  As we would write stories and captions for stories, we’d always try to come up with a new vocabulary word to use in the paper. It sort of became this one-upmanship amongst us.  Yeah, it was kind of nerdy, but we were all writers, so this was the equivalent of playing horse in basketball. Every week, someone would try a new word in a story in attempt to gain this weekly crown.  One week, one of our writers used the word CADRE.  She wrote that a cadre of police officers gathered on the scene. The editor didn’t want her to use the word.  She didn’t think it fit.  So the writer defined the word.  CADRE:  An elite or elect group that forms the core of an organization and is capable of training new members. A cadre of police officers certainly fit the definition.  The word ended up in the story and neve...

A few years ago, Sara and I had a scare. It was a Wednesday evening and my chest had been hurting on and off all day.  What's worse, I was having troubling breathing.  Just to take the stairs left me extremely winded.  Feeling exhausted, I confided in Sara about how I felt.  I was run down, extremely tired, having trouble breathing and my chest was pounding. She didn't hesitate to make a call.  Even though it was a church night, we were going to the hospital.  RIGHT NOW.   As I got into the car, it wasn't even a debate.  I wasn't stopping by the office or lining up a lesson for a substitute.  I was going straight to the emergency room.  No passing Go.  No collecting $200.  When I got to the ER, I was immediately taken back to a room.  No waiting in chairs for an hour trying to get an empty bed.  Within five minutes, I was on a gurney, my shirt was off, and instruments of various types were being hook...

My mom likes to tell this story: When I was a kid, we went camping.  We stayed at this camp ground and I always wanted to get my big wheel out for a joy ride.  Well, finally, my parents granted my request.  I got my big wheel, but I had to stay in sight.  That lasted all of five minutes.  Before you knew it, I was flying down a big hill and blasting away from my parents, all the while my mother is running after me. I don't remember that story, but I've heard my mom tell it plenty of times.  I relate it to you to remind you of disobedience.  We are all, at our heart, disobedient.  We don't like to follow the rules or do what we're told.  We test boundaries.  We push limits.  We see what we can get away with. It's part of our human nature to disobey.  We're hard-wired to do it.  It started with Adam and Eve and continues into the present day. Yet, here's the thing.  In Hebrews 5:7-9, the writer of Hebrews...

Goodbye.  The word is so final.  While the origin of the word come from the idea of "God be with you" it still feels final.  We say goodbye because we don't expect to see the other person again.  Goodbyes are hard to do. I have always preferred the word farewell.  Farewell literally means I hope you fare well in life until we meet again.  That doesn't feel so final to me.  It suggests a reunion.  We will meet again and I hope until then, you fare well. Whenever I leave a place or a person, I bid them farewell.  As a believer in Jesus, I believe in reunions.  I know that I will see other believers in Jesus again.  That may be here on earth.  It may be in the life to come.  But make no mistake, if you are a believer in Jesus, I will see you again.  Death is not the end.  Life is eternal. So I always say "farewell." In 2 Corinthians 13:11, Paul concludes his letter.  The New King James, I think, puts ...

As a soccer coach of five-year-olds, practices can some times be rough. Frustrating might be a better word. A lot of times the players don't listen.  They're playing tag or hugging or picking weeds.  Distractions capture their attention.  A helicopter or plane flies over head and every eye darts skyward.  A loud motorcycle or a police car with sirens blaring forces their gaze toward the highway and away from the goal.  One child heads to the bathroom and soon two more need to go as well. It takes a lot of patience to teach U5 soccer.  It also requires a lot of examples.  I learned this the hard way at my last practice. To be honest, I struggle as a coach.  I never played soccer.  I'm just a dad who likes spending time with his daughter and giving back.  So when I see other teams using more advanced techniques--like passing and defense--I try to emulate those things in practice.  I want our kids to compete and learn. So, th...

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by magic and magicians.  I remember buying toy magic kits and checking out magic trick books from the library.  Occasionally, I would try to show off the tricks I learned to my parents and friends. I'm a youth pastor now, so you can rightly assume I never got very good at magic.  Outside of a few easy tricks, I never could pull if off enough to fool people with my sleight of hand. And that's the thing about magic:  it's not real.  It's all a series of illusions made to focus your attention AWAY from what is really happening.  We marvel at how trained magicians pull off tricks we can't understand.  Yet, all they are doing is simply getting us to look, think or concentrate on one particular thing while they do the trick somewhere else. It's all about fooling our mind (or eyes).  Often, the trick itself is quite easy, once it's explained.  Yet, it looks so amazing that we often spend hours trying to figu...

Our society is all about self.  Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Vine and YouTube is all about promoting ourselves.  We want more followers, frequent re-tweets, lots of web hits and tons of friends to join the conversation.  Our thoughts and phrases and pictures are so important that we put everything out there for everyone to see.  We even created a new word about pictures of ourselves.  Selfies are all the rage. We are all about ourselves. We seek good self-images.  We want healthy self-esteem.  We're looking for self-worth.  We engage in self-promotion.  We talk about the need for self-respect. Are you starting to notice a pattern here? In all this self-glorification, we sometimes go too far.  Sometimes our desire to please us goes to the need for others to praise us.  We become self-important and self-conscious and we value our worth by what others say about us. We become more about pleasing people than pleasi...