Flag Football Week & Drama Performance

Week 4 ended really well at arts camp the youth performed two plays. The younger group performed The Grouchy Ladybug and the older group performed a scene from Hamlet. It was really neat to see the youth perform, especially when I know how difficult it is to get in front of a group of people and speak.

Flag football went well too, while the week seem to turn into a week of Shark and Minnows (a game of tag) with football flags, the youth really enjoyed it. Flag football week seemed to give us more of an opportunity to talk about sportsmanship and how we treat our teammates and our opposition. Unfortunately this is a tough road because most of the examples that the youth are seeing through professional sports are setting poor examples of sportsmanship.

During the week we talked them about the importance of letting wins and losses go after the games were over. We also talked a lot about the line between being competitive and being angry, which I have fallen on the wrong side of many times. Also, encouraging the youth to encourage their teammates and their opponents instead of tearing them down.

Definitely a challenging road but an important one.

God Hears and Answers Prayer

In memory of my Grandfather, Paul, I wish to pass along this story as Paul had told it to many listeners during his lifetime. Paul died in 1999.

During the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, we had droughts, no rain (in late summers and fall seasons) for five years. Thus, all the farmers in, a southern county of Maryland, had depleted any or all surplus feed for their cattle, and feed was high in price because it was scarce.

An uncle of mine, Roger, who was bout 76 years old, had a small farm. On this farm, Uncle Roger raised a small herd of cattle of which he prized very highly. Now due to the continued drought, he knew he could not feed his cattle unless we got some rain because his hay, barley and wheat crops had all failed. He must depend on a good corn crop, which needed rain. The corn stalks were firing, that is, drying up clear to the shoot, the stalks where large enough and the shoot was there, but for the ear of corn to grain out, it must have rain.

So, Uncle Roger knelt down right there in the cornfield and prayed for rain, telling God just how badly he needed it. As he finished his prayer he said, “Now God show me you heard my prayer”. Then, Uncle Roger got up and walked back toward his house, he looked up in the heavens, the sky was real clear, only one little cloud off to his left, no sign of any rain. But, just before Uncle Roger got to the porch of his house, there was a flash of lightning and a roll of thunder, which startled him. He said, “It is so hot, I guess that was heat lightning”, but before he could reach the house a beautiful fresh shower of rain was falling, enough so that, if you would have been standing in it you would have gotten good and wet. As Uncle Roger went in the house he went straight to his bedroom and knelt and thanked God for the lovely rain. He was sure God had heard his prayer.

The corn matured very nicely, and as it ripen, Uncle Roger cut and tied the stalks together. After finishing cutting all the stalks, he disked the ground. Then, Uncle Roger called me and asked, “If I would sow the field in wheat”. I asked, “Do you have the seed, fertilizer, and grass seed ready?” And he replied, “Yes”. So, I drove my tractor and drill down to his farm and sowed the field for him.

Afterwards, Uncle Roger went to shucking his corn. One day, after several weeks of shucking his corn, my phone rang; it was Uncle Roger. He said, “You must come down right away”. As I hung up the phone, I said to my wife, “I wonder what the trouble is down there, he sounds like he is crying”. You see his first wife had died in an automobile accident and Uncle Roger had remarried a woman some years younger and sometimes they did not get along too well. My wife said, “I guess you will find out when you get there”

As I drove up to his garage, Uncle Roger was standing out front, holding this ear of corn, shaking and crying and said, “Look what God has done for me”. He then handed the corn to me.

Uncle Roger told me how he had prayed for rain, how God had heard and answered by giving a good soaking rain; which my uncle figured was the answer to his prayer, but God had gone further. He also gave this perfect ear of corn with this perfect cross. Uncle Roger took me up in the field to show me just where he was shucking. That day, he had completed shucking one bundle of stalks and had re-tied that bundle and laid it aside. Uncle Roger was then about half way through the second bundle, when he shucked out this ear of corn and as he went to throw it on the pile, this ear of corn shook in his hand; but he was already in the process of throwing it and the ear fell on the other side of the pile. Bewildered, Uncle Roger got up and walked around the pile and found this beautiful ear of corn. He said, “As I looked around, I was standing just about where I knelt to pray”. I have never seen anyone so elated in my life, crying and shaking for joy.

So, I say again, “God surely does hear and answers prayers. Here is proof. Praise His Holy Name, Amen.

Success and Failure

Last week, I went out and shot baskets at the court down the street from my office. While I was shooting, I started thinking about why I enjoy sports.

One of the things that I realized was that in sport successes and failures were constant in every play or in my case every shot. If I shot and made it, I felt successful and if I shot and missed I felt like I failed. While this is a simple idea and realization, I feel like in life we don't have a lot of opportunities to fail and learn from those failures as in sport. As a bookkeeper I really can't fail, if I do, it immediately looks bad on the organization that I work for. I can't make mistakes and have the opportunity to learn from them. But in basketball, if a shot is long or short, I have the opportunity to go back to that spot that I shot from and adjust.

While following Christ, we are only "successful" when we realized our sins/failures and confess them to Christ and ask for Him to forgive us . Due to the fact that our sin keeps us from God the only way that we can be close to Him, in a relationship, is to live a life of repentance. When we confess and pursue God that is when our shot goes in.

VeggieTales

One thing that has occurred since my son started to enjoy watching cartoons; was that we are watching a lot more than I had in many years. The fun part of this is discovering shows that I never watched before that make our whole family laugh. One of those shows is VeggieTales, if you never seen VeggieTales I highly recommend it. It's really creative, funny and they are always pointing their lessons back to the Bible. Here is a short clip, one of the funnier ones...



Now with getting to know VeggieTales I decided to read the biography of one of the creators of the show Phil Vischer, its called My, Myself and Bob. Phil has an incredible story of creating VeggieTales watching it have immense success and then watching it fall all the way to bankruptcy. VeggieTales is actually own now by a large media company. Watching Phil struggle through the his book was difficult because he was attempting to do something great for God, impact children and youth with a great cartoon that emphasized Christian ideas, especially that "God made you special and he loves you very much" (this is said at the end of every show). He thought that he was following God and pushing into his calling and then it all fell apart.

Near the end of the book, Phil writes about what God taught him through taking away his dream (creating a cartoon to reach youth). One quote that really caught my attention was this, "He who has God plus many things has nothing more than he who has God alone" - C.S. Lewis. Wow, its especially eye catching when its written like this, "He who has God plus an amazing ministry impacting millions of lives around the world has nothing more than he who has God alone", that idea has really set me back. I want to be in a place where I can believe that on a daily basis where its not about what I do, is about God and my relationship with Him and that alone is enough. Thanks Phil