gratitude

Distraction

Since I’ve been sick, I have some time, so I’m doing an awful lot of thinking about distraction. The last straw was yesterday, my Bible in my lap, reading Philemon until finally realizing I had no idea what I had just read. This wouldn’t have taken a monumental feat of focus. Philemon is 1 chapter, barely a page. (I think the letter is pretty funny, too. Paul is sort of manipulating a slave-owner, saying things like, “I could make you, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll ask…I don’t want you to do it because you’re forced to, but because you want to…I’ll pay anything he owes, and won’t mention how much you owe me.” Ha!Th)

But I’m sick, and as always, very dramatic about being sick. At the risk of oversharing super-gross information, there is absolutely no way that my head could store in 3 lifetimes all of the mucous that is coming out of me. Where does it come from??? It’s just produced from nothing at all, like the water, land & stars in Genesis 1. But all of it makes my head feel like it’s underwater, unable to think clearly and coherently.

Illness is simply one of so many. One of the biggest struggles of living a purposeful life is to maintain a focus on our call & mission. The constant barrage of stimulation that (may or may not) require immediate attention can keep us like animals frantically chasing the next shiny object. We live in reaction, intention is a dream, and days and weeks are lost to the blur of distraction.

There are people, with our drama, divisions, responsibilities, and breaks. Work. Our daily practices, spiritual and otherwise (even though there really is no otherwise – all of life is spiritual). Ministry. And on and on, right? There’s no end in sight.

What’s surprising is that all of these ‘distractions’ are good things. How can spiritual practice become an obstacle to our focus, or mission? When it becomes the point, the end, instead of the means to a greater end. We are called to love people, to have “dirty pens” (my paraphrase of Proverbs 14:4), and that dirt can sidetrack our call. Helping to carry each other’s burdens is beautiful, but the burdens can easily become dead weight. When ministry is solely a rote activity to check boxes and not an expression of gratitude or glorification, then it becomes distasteful and a tool of the enemy.

My sickness kept me from several appointments and opportunities. Of course, I needed the rest, needed to regain my health, but the fact is that there was a big cost. I think the main thing is to acknowledge those costs, to have our eyes opened to the spaces where our focus can be drawn away from our true love. Then we can decide. It can be anything, it really doesn’t matter what we choose. Sleeping last week was probably the more important thing for me, but any step towards bringing the intention and attention back into our lives is vital. Our work is simply another way of worship, as long as we make it so. Everything can be worship, as long as we make it so.

The reason music on vinyl is so great is not the sound. It’s the ritual. We decide what we want to hear, choose the record, remove the album from the sleeve, set the needle down, and become active listeners. We can become active participants in these gracious divine gifts that are our lives, and this can happen as soon as we say it does. It can happen today.

Something Happened

So, a bad thing happened. One of us had a car accident, and that happens. It’s an expensive lesson, but it is a space where life teaches out loud, and maybe someday, we’ll be very thankful for the lesson and the cost will be very low.

Before the sermon yesterday, I read the account of Jacob & his dream, from Genesis. This is not unusual, I refer to it often. But sometimes, the message of “surely God was in this place and I was unaware (Gen 28:16),” or, as I paraphrase, “don’t miss your life and the people in it (Chad 24:365),” hits differently.

Everything valuable in that accident was ok. The most valuable to me got in our car & came home with the Angel & I. The other valuables had minor damage to their vehicles, but went home, as well. There are a million ways that day ends where everyone doesn’t come home. I am grateful, in ways I can’t express.

When I read that passage yesterday, I nearly began to weep, because “What if…” The beautiful gift of this life we’ve been given, the beautiful gift of each other, can be very fragile, and what if (one of those million inexplicably horrific ways that too many have to endure)? Our hearts don’t seem big and/or strong enough to hold all of this love. But they are – we’ve been made in the image of our God.

We keep loving, and keep loving, and keep loving. Of course, it can hurt like crazy, where it feels like the pain won’t ever stop. And we love anyway. The only way to ensure this doesn’t happen is to be alone, and that won’t do at all. Being made in the image of a triune God means being alone is “not good,” according to Genesis 1 & 2. Loving with a whole heart, mind, and soul requires living with the possibility of the dreaded “what ifs.” I hope the “what ifs” never, ever happen to anybody. But I certainly do hope we all know the love that makes the “what if” so vicious.

The tears are an offering poured out from a fully present, engaged, working, thankful heart. A heart that is created to keep loving and loving and loving.

Instead, Offense

After the message yesterday, the Angel graciously (as softly as possible) informed me that, “You said 3 points, but I have no idea what they were. I only had 1.” This is not a strength of mine. I have lots of strengths, (well, several strengths), but easy steps to enlightenment isn’t one of them. So, here they are:

1. Embrace Your Humanness. We are human. We will fail. Julie Z. says, “Humble people have an ability to withstand failure/criticism because they have an inner sense of the value of being human rather than externals.” Externals are bumps, obstacles, utter failures, and they don’t mean there is something wrong with us, that we’re broken, or that we’ve let everyone down and have no value in the universe. It simply means we’re human, and we’ve taken a shot. That’s a very, very good thing.

The Gospel Equation is: God, Scripture, the Helmet of Salvation, our Value, Identity in Him > (is greater than) our circumstances and/or performance. For instance, my love for my son is exactly the same if he has 40 and hits a game-winner at the buzzer, OR if he goes 1-28 and they lose by 1,000,000. In fact, my love for him doesn’t change if he doesn’t play basketball at all.

The Action Step is to: Try something you don’t know how to do (learn something new) AND fail a lot.

2. Practice Mindfulness and Self-Compassion. “Mindfulness grows our self-awareness,” Julie Z writes, “by giving us permission to stop and notice our thoughts and emotions without judgment. If we judge what’s going on inside us, we paint a distorted view of ourselves.” We can change only if we can learn to see ourselves kindly and discover where our unhealthy/limiting beliefs are, accept them (and ourselves), and then transform them with Jesus.

Our Action Step is to ask ourselves what we think (about anything & everything). Why do we think that? Is it helping, hurting, limiting, or freeing? Be introduced to and pleased to meet you.

3. Express gratitude. Gratitude makes us less self-focused and more focused on those around us. In other words, gratitude makes us more humble and much less awful. The Action Step: Say Thanks…often.

In a sentence, learn who you are, learn who they are, take care of you & each other, and be thankful for all of it. You are created in God’s image…and so are they, and that is awesome. That’s probably why she couldn’t tell the difference between 1, 2 & 3. I can’t. Each gives and takes from the other, the lines that divide are blurred, and it becomes a kind of circle that feeds the circle.

Now, I’m writing today, not to restate yesterday’s bullet points, but because of a conversation over lunch. A man said to me that what he thought during the message is how he’d been playing defense, almost exclusively, and how he needed to send the offense on the field. (Maybe we all use and understand sports metaphors is because Sports are, without question, the American Religion.) What he meant is that he had been reacting to the changing landscape of his life – like we all do. When our schedules or circumstances shift, our days look different, our routines & practices are altered, and we adjust. When we finally adjust, things change again, and we return to GO.

What you may notice is that these 3 clear, easy to remember points require a tremendous intentionality. As far as I can tell, intention is the opposite of reaction. It’s hard to be thankful when work is upside down. And when the storms are raging, who has time to wonder what we think, or how we feel about it? Right? That’s why it’s so vital that we don’t just coast during the ordinary time.

We dive into Ephesians so that, when life flattens us, we either already have our helmets on, or we know to put them on right away, before we do anything else. We become the kind of people who see beauty, not for the perfect days like today, but for when it’s cold and rainy, so that our souls know to keep looking around for the divine. Our identity is deeply imprinted on us in practice, so that we don’t waver on game days, when we’re 0-4 with 4 strikeouts.

So now what? As always, the “now what?” is to love somebody. Reaction happens, there are sometimes entire seasons where we have to play defense, but maybe we can remember to turn the offense loose from time to time.

Todays

Last night, we went to a nearby Catholic school to watch a high school girls softball game. It was my first since I was at college, but that might not count. I was only there to see the Angel, so maybe a game happened, maybe our school won, maybe they played with NERF balls or in ball gowns, maybe, but who could possibly care? Not me, that’s for sure. I had been away for 2 months in California, wasting time post-graduation, and spent most of those 2 months with my brother, sister and their cats, listening to music, writing, and missing my special lady.

Anyway, last night. After an extra inning, our school won. How did I end up at a high school softball game? For a very similar reason to the one in which I previously found myself at a softball game; a girl. My son has a girlfriend who is a star. I know she’s a terrific athlete, but it’s one thing to hear it and another altogether to see it. In the extra inning, with runners on 2nd and 3rd, she came to the plate… I can’t remember anything in baseball being as much of a foregone conclusion. Baseball is a very difficult game, a “high-failure” sport, where nothing is certain. Except this. These runs would score, everyone there knew it, and a bases clearing triple later, we were all proven right.

Earlier in the day, I gave communion to some friends in their living room. (This is something I hadn’t done before, and it’s something I’ll do again.) The man is ill, the prognosis is not too great, but we shared that moment in our sadness and our care, giving each other and God our presence, the most priceless of gifts we ever truly have to offer. I told them I loved them, and left a couple of hours before the eclipse.

As far as the eclipse, the schools closed early, so my family (all 4 of us) and the softball superhero stood outside in those ridiculous looking glasses looking up through the clouds at the sun.

I’m not sure I was overwhelmed by the eclipse, or what I was feeling, but it was big and heavy and significant. Saturday, we attended a funeral for my cousin. I had the honor of speaking, and I chose to speak about my favorite passage in the Scriptures: “Surely God was in this place, and I was unaware.”

Incidentally, I have quite a few favorite passages, but this one holds special meaning to me. You see, I missed so much of my dad before he passed. And I have missed so much of you, missed so much of my cousin, and missed so much of me.

This post is full of GREAT BIG MOMENTS, but our lives are made up of what is often mistakenly called “ordinary” time. This “ordinary” time is so easily missed, and only then do we realize that it was never ordinary at all, never common. It, and we, are wildly unique and spectacular. A ticket agent’s help in Dallas who was “just” doing her job, a softball dad’s handshake, a dog laying on the floor in a living room while 4 people share communion, laughing at the dinner table, and walking outside in the grass…when did we stop realizing these things were miracles of divine presence? Love isn’t only rose petals and grand gestures, and life isn’t always extra inning RBI triples, it’s sometimes pushing shopping carts & quiet nights reading in bed. It’s not always mountaintops, it’s simply ok. And I don’t have to tell you that other times, it’s heartbreaking.

But these are our lives, each of our todays are gifts, God is in all of these places, and it’s really time to stop missing them, stop taking them for granted, believing the lies that they are anything other than wonderfully, fantastically extraordinary.

Fruit

Do you know you can get married in AT&T Stadium (where the Dallas Cowboys play)? Or have a sweet sixteen party or quinceañera? These are just 2 of the things I learned on my tour of the stadium. And to answer your question, they never addressed why you’d want to.

My son & I went to Dallas earlier this week to see an NBA basketball game, except they had rescheduled the game (I’m still waiting for a response to my email that includes a heartfelt response from Mavericks owner Mark Cuban), so we just went to Dallas. While we were there, we toured the home stadium of everyone’s favorite football team, America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys – I wrote about it on my other blog, lovewithacapitall.com. The spoiler is that I didn’t really love it like I thought I would, but I’m not writing about that, specifically, here.

Something else happened, while I was there, that I am writing about. In last week’s post, I shared about our disappointment with the game. I have very many people (i.e. you) in my life (much more than I could ever deserve) who are beautiful and care for me in such lovely ways. One of them has a Good Friend in Dallas and offered to reach out to help us, with what I expected to be suggestions, directions for an aimless trip. I was mistaken.

We were met at a cool lunch spot by a young woman, who had arranged our day for us, booking tours and making dinner reservations. She spent the day with us, enjoying the experience as much as we did. As it turned out, she was also paying for everything (as representative for the person she worked for, the Good Friend). I can only guess what everything cost, an extraordinary sum, but the actual amount was actually sort of irrelevant, as far as we’re concerned.

What IS important, and the sermon they were preaching to us was on generosity, on our relationship to our money.

You see, Jerry Jones (the owner of the stadium) chose to use his money to create an obscene tower to the heavens, a monument to himself and his own desperate bid for “greatness.” The Cowboys might play there, but there is no mistaking that it is the home of Jerry Jones.

(You don’t have to worry, I will continue to love my Cowboys…but I will not be back to that stadium, unless I’m giving the Sunday morning Gospel message there;)

The Good Friend chose to use his wealth to give to my son & I, 2 people he had not, and still has not, met. He chose to give what he had earned to us, to give what he had been blessed with, he chose to love us. It speaks to the relationship he has with the person we do know, but it speaks more to the character of both. They are conduits. What they have been given, they will give.

Their money is a way to connect, a way to provide, to pass along their faith. Their legacy is gratitude, experience, generosity, care, ministry, and beauty. The legacy of Jones is a massive silver egg in Arlington.

In a story in the Bible, Jesus tells a rich young man to give away all he has and follow Him. The young man can’t, and walks away with only his wealth. He has corporations and empires to build, bank balances that need to grow. Money isn’t evil, it’s just a thing, a tool, that can be used to connect or to destroy. The love of money is the problem; that love is a ravenous monster that devours everything in its path in its insatiable quest for More.

I don’t pretend to know Jerry Jones, and to infer things about his character and his god may be unfair. I am not his judge, thankfully. But I don’t know the Good Friend, either. Sometimes, all others have is our fruit to express our hearts. Our time in Dallas was just a day, but the questions it asked and the contrast in the answers, will last forever.

One Word

I have another website I write on. It isn’t always explicitly spiritual. Of course, it is spiritual; It’s me, and everything is spiritual, but I don’t always use specific verses and I sometimes just write about songs or movies or books. Anyway, the platform that hosts both sites (WordPress/Jetpack) gives a prompt every day, in case you don’t have anything to write about and want to write anyway. This is not usually a problem for me, but it does sometimes set me down an interesting path I didn’t know I wanted to walk. Today I was going to write about a familiar subject, the painful freedom of boundaries, how hard they are to keep, especially as we are all such soft-hearted loving souls. We don’t want to set them, and we second guess, sometimes being terribly rough on ourselves, and go back on them frequently. You see, I have a very good friend… (this is the conception of so many posts – my filthy pens and the beautiful people that are in them with me.)

The site prompt today is “What is one word to describe you?” Or we can modify it into “What one word would you want to describe you?” because I don’t want us even thinking of going down some self-loathing path the enemy has paved for us.

So, who are you, in one word?

It’s a coincidence (if you believe in that kind of thing – another very good friend calls them God-incidences) that I have been thinking about this, in a slightly different way. I want to be the kind of man who is taken for granted (I know that’s 3, but it’s my exercise, so I can use a phrase if I want). I want everyone to know I will always show up, give them my heart, my best, that I will love them, that they are safe and cared for. I want everyone to know I’ll make lots of mistakes, and say sorry & mean it afterwards, and then I’ll grow. I want my boys to forget to thank me when they have a game and I am in the stands, because I am just always in the stands. I want that to describe me. I want everyone to know I believe them, believe in them. That I don’t care who they think they were, but that I care a great deal about who they are, who they will become, Whose they are. I want everyone to take for granted that I am a Genesis 1 (and not Genesis 3) man.

But what started me down this path lately, is that when I am hurting and breaking, I begin to resent that I am taken for granted. It’s the big warning light on my dashboard. I consider closing the pen door, and opening it only for people who say “please,” and “thank you.” This is only for a second, maybe, or a day, but it magnifies who I am created to be, Whose story I am in, and quickly opens my eyes to who I want to become. Painful moments looking into a mirror are terrific teachers. There doesn’t have to be judgment, just conviction and a gentle invitation into this new creation I am. (That is a fairly new understanding.)

Who I want to be doesn’t change. The Gospel doesn’t change. I just turn a little, and I no longer like those sometimes smooth clean wide paths of the enemy. They are not for me, not even close. And I repent. (That is an example of a word I don’t use too much on the other site – I’d say “turn around,” but you know that’s what Jesus meant then, and what I mean now.)

So, what’s your word (or phrase)? Tell me what it is. I’ll show up, I’m safe, a terrific listener, and will be awfully careful with you. And you can take that for granted, please.

Is It Worthy?

Last week, I wrote about dancing, romancing, and “killing grooves.” Today, it is occurring to me that there are some fundamentalist religious communities that seemingly exist to “kill the groove,” who don’t want us dancing and certainly would not encourage romancing. I don’t know why.

We make tons of rules and laws for living proper Christian lives, a simple remake of the Torah, based on our modern societal and moral characteristics. Am I allowed to dance? How close? How fast? How long? And with whom? My instinct is, obviously, to say, “YES!!! Dance!!! Dance now, today, and forever, for as long as we can!” But maybe that’s also pretty simplistic. Maybe none of this is that easy. Or maybe it’s even simpler.

We really like complex, and that’s probably so we have plenty of excuses and exit ramps. And we also love the idea that we are the ones who understand the complex, like a 2024 Gnosticism. “I have the special knowledge required to be a “good” Christian.”

[Here’s something I just noticed: I have never used the word “Christian” before without much consideration. It’s a loaded word with baggage in many of our lives. And we’ve somehow shoehorned it into a completely different part of speech, making it an adjective. It’s not, it’s a noun. It is a follower of Jesus Christ. And, like many other words – like church, sin, etc – to leave it behind because it’s been misunderstood as problematic is foolish and in desperate need of reclamation. We follow Christ, we are Christians. Nice.]

Ephesians 4:1 says, “live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” It is, at the same time, simpler and heavier, clearer and more open to interpretation. The question we all are invited to ask, through this verse, is, “is this (action, thought, word, post, meal, practice) worthy of my call?” And maybe it is, and maybe it’s not. Maybe you can have a drink with dinner and I can’t, based on a host of different factors. Maybe I can dance in a hot sweaty small room with flashing strobe lights, and maybe that’s a horrible idea for you. Maybe you can have an Oreo and I can’t. And timing is important, too. Maybe it’s time for you to add and maybe it’s time for you to subtract, and maybe the thing to be added or subtracted is the same thing.

I can’t tell you if you can dance or how close or for how long. I can’t say if those things hurt your soul and heart and take you farther from Your Creator. Maybe they do. And maybe they do today.

Of course, some things are always beneath us. Addiction, abuse, objectification, oppression, deceit, infidelity, and on and on, are unworthy of our status as children of The King. There is no circumstance where they are not, and that’s why we feel so gross when we participate in them.

This maybe business, this “live a life worthy” of your call, is not easy. It’s not a handbook that tells us in black and white. That might be frustrating, but that’s purposeful, too.

We can never forget that the point of all of this is relationship, a life lived WITH Him. We can’t do it on our own, weren’t supposed to, so we hold His (and each other’s) hand and say, “is this worthy?” We rely on Him to guide us, to show us where we’ve compromised, to tell us again and again who we are.

Then, we just have to believe Him. And dance. Or not. But probably dance.

Design For Life

This morning, I was listening to a playlist (the modern ‘mixtape’), and the song “Internet Killed The Video Star,” by the Limousines came on. It’s a perfect title and a terrific song, and it has this peach of a lyric:

“Well, I’m a horrible dancer; I ain’t gonna lie, but I’ll be da**ed if that means that I ain’t gonna try. Yeah, I’m a [expletive] romancer, baby; I ain’t gonna lie, but I’ll be da**ed if that means that I ain’t gonna try. Get up, get up, get up, and dance.”

So, I texted this song and lyric to my brother and sister, and she shared with me the message from her yoga class (written by yoga master Becky Hemsley):

“I know there may have been times in your life when you’ve stopped dancing, stopped singing, stopped being yourself, because someone was watching you. Judging you….We’ve been taught that we must only be ourselves if it suits other people…The birds sing – not because we might listen – but simply with the joy of being alive….So sing as loud as you wish, and dance as much as you like. You do not exist for the enjoyment of others. You exist to be alive. Properly, fully, beautifully alive.”

I’d only change one thing about her message: “You do not exist for the enjoyment of others. You exist to be alive. You exist for the enjoyment of your Creator, to feel His love, and to engage with the life He’s given you.” He is so pleased when we express our joy, our delight in Him and the gifts He’s so abundantly given. As followers of the Risen Christ, we should be the most joyful. We should throw the best parties, laugh the loudest, and dance the easiest.

Sometimes the world sends you messages so obvious, so clear, so coincidental that coincidence is impossible. It’s a specific message from the Creator of the Universe to us – in this case, a message to dance and/or romance, or share the message to dance and/or romance, or witness to the importance and imperative that we all dance and/or romance. I’m choosing to do all 3 today.

We have been conditioned into self-consciousness, even when that means we miss out on all sorts of beauty and wonder. When did that happen? When did we stop dancing (even if we’re bad at it)? Who told us we’re bad at it? For that matter, who are they to decide? When did we stop romancing (even if we don’t know how to do it yet)? When did we stop singing, stop living, and when did we replace it with just quietly getting by?

Well, I don’t think we should do that anymore. I think we should dance whenever and however we want. It’s super fun to be so free.

And as far as romancing, the characteristic that makes each of us so sexy is confidence, passion, interest, joy. We are good dancers when we dance…when we love to turn the music up and move. We are great romancers when we lean in and give our authentic selves to each other, with vulnerability, honesty, trust, and open-ness. We are great lovers when we love. And the more we practice, the better we are.

You don’t have to apologize for dancing or singing. If anything, you can apologize for not dancing and singing earlier. Have a good time. This life is a gift, and it can be very hard and hurt a lot, so we are well served to enjoy it when we can, to move our hips when whenever we feel like it.

The next song in the playlist was “Murder On The Dance Floor,” where Sophie Ellis-Bextor sings, “you better not kill this groove,” which is more solid advice as we design our lives. The point is to not kill any more grooves, to not squash anyone else’s dancing, and to sing and romance, to love, as loud as we can.

Thankful Again

My last post was on the 8th, which is too long between conversations. That post was about a high school basketball game (sort of), and you may be interested to know that in the meantime, the local high school boys basketball team made the district playoffs. That was a pleasant surprise. What was not quite as pleasant was the result. They were soundly beaten by the higher seed, and as I sat watching the wheels fall off, I began thinking about gratitude.

This morning, our local mechanic called me with some terrible news about my car. I had a very reliable Ford Focus for roughly 15 years that I loved more than a reasonable person should love an inanimate object. So, when it reached the end of it’s life, of course I’d replace it with another, newer Focus. What I could not have known is that the first Focus was the wild exception. Ford Focuses (Foci) are rolling trash cans – at least the later year models, before they were put out to pasture. A basic Google search (which I did not do…) returns a long history of recalls and transmission defects. The terrible news is a price tag that is much too high. In retrospect, this isn’t a surprise, it’s just the latest in a long line of too-high price tags for repairs.

I’m fairly certain it’ll be the last, though. Before I pay another one, I’ll set it on fire and roll it into Memorial Lake. Incidentally, if you happen to be looking for an as-is money pit, I have a Ford Focus that I’d part with for only the remaining payments. Message me if you’re interested.

Now. I’m angry at my poor decision to purchase such an albatross. I’m angrier at Ford for the sick joke they’ve played on me, a loyal customer. (I’ve had only Fords since I was 16; an Escort, Probe, the Greatest Focus, and this current wreck. The Greatest Focus was the only wholly positive experience.) I’m not angry at my mechanic, they’re trustworthy and seemingly sorry for my plight.

Immediately after the terrible news, as I was screaming, alone in my wife’s car, my mind turned to Tuesday’s playoff game and gratitude. The team was lucky to get into the playoffs, the boys are healthy and some of them are quite extraordinary at the sport. Do you know how rare exceptional athleticism is, how this gift is something most people in the world would love to have? Can you imagine what so many would give for the privilege of getting trounced in a playoff game? We are so lucky to go to a school with sports like this, safe travel, parents & fans that can attend. Of course, it’s disappointing to lose, but the real loss for me was my perspective (even if only for a few minutes).

And we have 3 cars. Only 18% of people in the world have 1, 10% of Americans don’t have a car at all. And we have 3. I can pay the too-high bill. I work from home, and got the terrible news as I was driving home from the gym. I took a hot shower, put on clean clothes, and ate breakfast. Samuel is home today putting together a massive LEGO set. I really like him – which is not something to be taken for granted. I have to love him, but he’s really wonderful to be around. I would want him to be my friend, if he wasn’t my son. I’m able to drive the Angel’s car while mine is in the shop, which means I take her to work and pick her up, which is no problem at all. She’s the best, so far out of my league and ridiculously more than I could ever deserve. And I get to kiss her at drop off and pick up.

This is the trouble with gratitude, for me. When the terrible news comes, my vision narrows until I can only see the terrible news. The challenge is to notice this myopia and adjust my perspective, until that period where I am lost is shorter and shorter. I’m not convinced that we can eliminate it altogether, but we probably can reduce the time we check out of our real lives full of blessing. We can compress the disappointment of losing into a few minutes, and then regain our perspective. The Bible says to always be thankful, and maybe that’s a bit much. How about if we are thankful now, whenever now is, so that when we inevitably lose the plot and aren’t too thankful for our rolling Ford Refuse, we can always start again, here, now? And maybe our verse can be “always be thankful, again.”

Those People, pt 2: Sports & Sandals

Last night was a big high school basketball game. Our local high school hosted a hated (as hated as high school rivalry is, which is to say, manufactured and superficial) rival school, the winner would go to the playoffs, the loser would not. The teams are very well matched, the schools are mirror images. The officiating was abysmal, again, and had more of a role in the outcome than any of us would like. The good guys lost, in overtime, in a too-stressful, exciting, if not overly well played, game.

There is no reason to write about that, nothing unusual or noteworthy – in sports, people & teams win, and others lose. Lessons are learned, we develop (or not) through both results.

However, what happened after the game is what I want to tell you.

High school kids are mostly the same, loud, and loudly obnoxious. We don’t think they’re all that similar, but that’s because these are ours and those aren’t. We think their student section is worse, absolutely horrible, their players and coaches are unsportsmanlike, and they think the same about our student section, players and coaches. It’s situational blindness, and it’s common in all -isms.

Our student section was boisterous and aggressive, their players played to that increased energy. When their player hit a 3-pointer, he’d turn and glare at them with 3 fingers raised, which threw our kids into a frenzy. It was hot and noisy and passionate and looked like we were heading for a bench clearing melee.

The game ended, emotions soared, our players cried at a missed opportunity where a game was won/lost in 1,000 different ways and could have easily gone our way. They may look like adults, but they are 16 years old. They are kids, and we can say it’s just a game, but at 16, everything is of the highest importance. Do you remember having your heart broken, thinking you’d never recover? That you would never love again? That she was your soul mate, your person, and there would never be another like her? And now we don’t remember her name or what color her eyes were. We held strong opinions on trivialities, fought over pro football teams, and made list after list of best albums (and whoever didn’t agree was wrong, and was only embarrassing themselves.) A basketball game does matter, A LOT, to a 16 year old who had sweat for months, or in the case of my boy, the last several years, thinking, dreaming of this moment, and to come up short is absolutely devastating.

They would be forgiven for an angry outburst or moment of regret.

After moving through the line, shaking hands, their players moved quickly in the direction of our bleachers… We held our breath and waited.

We’ve been talking about divisions, right? And how we build our walls so high and thick to emphasize the difference between US and THEM. We are right, obviously, and they are wrong. And this week’s quote/question was about if our relationship with Jesus, His sacrifice, His Kingdom was more important than any and every difference we have with others.

What would these pretend distinctions lead to, in a high school gym in Pennsylvania? We already know, have read countless news stories and watched too many new stories, where it has already led, so many times before. We already know we’ve too often chosen our walls over Jesus.

So, what happened? They shook hands, smiled, appreciated the terrific environment for high school sports, affirming the discipline, effort, and skill of the contest. They celebrated the experience they were privileged enough to share.

Then, afterwards, they all met up again to talk, as friends might, with more that united them than could ever divide, in the hallway on their way to the bus.

I watched, with tears in my own eyes. Sure, from the loss and my boy’s crushed spirit, but also from this gorgeous picture of the Sandals of Peace. If we can just keep our eyes open to the divine all around us, I think we’re probably treated to beauty like this, to the sight of God’s Kingdom breaking through into this hurting world, more than we can possibly imagine. We just get so cynical sometimes, believing the darkness will never lift, believing that we’re mean, nasty, untrustworthy and irredeemable in our broken-ness. We can close our eyes and lose hope, but sometimes, in an unlikely place, we see that our faith has not been misplaced, that Jesus, and love, wins.