In the Zone

'Tis the season.  Yep, time for political signs, attack ads and bullet-point rehetoric.  It's election season. As I view each of the candidates, they each, in their own way, say similar things. What's the answer for your problems? More government regulation, more legislation and better policies. All of these things, according to the people running for office, will make your life easier and help you significantly. Among their words is the discussion of the poor. Who is poor?  Who is rich?  Who should be taxed? Who should be helped? But really, who is poor? In Matthew 5:3, Jesus said we are all poor.  We are poor in spirit. He defines poor, not by wealth or means, but by our utter need for the presence of God in our lives.  We are all created with a hole that only God can fill.  We are God-poor. We need him and only Jesus can provide a relationship with him. It's the foundational statement in the Beatitudes. Those who are poor in spirit, when...

God values you. Did you know that?  It's true. God values you. We see in the pages of scripture - Psalm 139 to be specific - that God formed you in the womb, called you by name and that you are fearfully and wonderfully made.  Not only that, Psalm 139 tells us that God is all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing, ever-present and yet still takes time to form you and know you. God values you. So many times in our society, we feel undervalued by someone. We decry racism or classism or sexism or corporate greed or environmental factors that retard our growth and development as valuable members of society. We start movements or Twitter hashtags to rally our cause.  We use words like "disenfranchised" or "discriminated" or "left behind." All of that is to say we feel worthless, oppressed or distressed. We seek to right the wrongs that have been done to us.  Yet, we miss the point.  God values you.  It doesn't matter what your skin color is or...

I cut out the above cartoon several years ago.  I depicts a think-tank with the results of their latest study:  Life is a leading cause of death and they recommend against it. It's funny because it's true.  You can't die if you are not alive.  So life, in fact, is the leading cause of death.  It's funny when we think of it in terms of all the studies on food and nutrition and health.  It seems like every study releases reveals that eating or drinking something will inevitably lead to our death due to some debilitating disease.  But the reality of this cartoon is far too often we take the punchline seriously.  Since life is the leading cause of death and hurt and pain, as a society, we simply opt not to choose life. This week marks the anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion.  In that time, over 56 million abortions have taken place. 56,000,000.  Let that number sink in for a minute.  While we decry gu...

Have you ever been in a strange place with nowhere to stay?  It can be very disconcerting. A few years ago, I experienced such a thing.  My dad and I had traveled to attend a NASCAR race.  We have hotel reservations, but when we arrived, they had no record of our reservation.  Even with a confirmation number, nothing showed up. To make a very long story short, we spent the night sleeping in my dad's van because there was literally no room for us in the inn, or any inn, for that matter. It can frustrating to get somewhere only to find out you have no place to go.  I imagine Joseph and Mary experienced that same frustration that first Christmas night.  Only there frustration was magnified because of Mary's pregnancy and Jesus's imminent birth. Luke 2 tells us that Jesus was laid in a manger - which is a feed trough - because there was no room for them in the inn.  Now, the Greek for inn may refer to a guest room and not a hotel, but the implicati...

I love Star Wars. If you didn't know that, then you don't really know me.  I have a Star Wars room. I collect Star Wars action figures.  I read Star Wars books.  Two of my top 10 movies of all time are Star Wars movies.  I am well-versed in Star Wars and can pretty much quote the Original Trilogy. This week is Star Wars week for me.  With the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I am so excited.  I have waited 30 years for this movie to be made.  I am giddy.  I got work done early this week just so the thought of the movie wouldn't distract me from getting things done. I love Star Wars.  I will see the first showing in just a few hours. That being said, Star Wars is just a story.  It has heroes and villains and a plot and characters.  It's themes are echoed not just in the Star Wars saga, but in many tales of adventure.  In fact, Star Wars is not an original concept.  It was based on the S...

When I was a young teenager, I knew exactly what I was going to be when I grew up.  I was going to be an attorney. Now, this decision didn't come as a result of me wanting to help people or because I had an affinity for the law. No, at the ripe old age of 13, I wanted to be a lawyer because lawyers were rich.  They made a lot of money, and coming from a family that didn't always have a lot of means, that was one of my desires as an adult. Thankfully, I soon found a new love:  journalism.  That one, though, comes at a much discounted salary from an attorney.  But I loved writing and covering sports and it's what I decided to do. Not long after I began my sports writing career, God called me to the ministry.  It wasn't long after I started serving as a part-time youth minister that I knew God had called me to full-time vocational ministry.  I've been doing that ever since. It's funny to think about how I got from a desire to be rich to a call t...

Do you have a flying car?  How about a hoverboard? Yeah, one of the big stories of 2015 was Back to the Future Day - the day in the movie Back to the Future 2 when Marty and Doc went into the future.  Leading up to the day, you could view any number of videos or stories about what the movie got right and what it got wrong. Obviously, no one is flying in a car.  Hoverboards don't really exist.  And, the Cubs didn't win the World Series.  So, they got a few things wrong. However, it's amazing how much they got right.  Video conferencing, wall-mounted televisions, and 80s nostalgia were all real things in our current day and age.  And while Jaws didn't produce double-digit sequels, 3D movies are bigger than ever. Now that we're approaching 2016, we're going to start hearing predictions for the upcoming year. We'll hear about Presidential elections, economic forecasts, upcoming movies and even anticipated weather.  A lot of these predictions ...