Red Sox Report

I hate to say (or write) it but the Yankees are starting to worry me. Though I believe you can’t buy a win the Yankees seem to have pulled it together over the past week. The Red Sox have been playing great baseball, they’ve been on top for a while now keeping the best record in the AL. Ortiz and Wakefield have both been great so far, I am most surprised with Wakefield; he used to be a guy that could last only five innings but is consistently going deep. Beckett and Lester have been great as expected turning in quality starts after rough beginnings. I think Penny isn’t getting enough credit he’s pitched great so far or at least well enough to get wins. Then there’s Smoltz, I was playing a game the night he started but I heard after a rough first inning he settled down and pitched well so hopefully he can have a good start tomorrow. Overall the Sox have played extremely well and will hopefully continue to do so, if they keep it up they can easily win the division (I hope I didn’t jinx it!).

When The Going Gets Tough, We've Got To Trust God

I finished reading the book of Job about a week ago, and even though I’ve written a lot about suffering I want to write a little bit more. When something goes wrong here on earth it’s easy to forget what God thinks about it. Job is an interesting book; it starts with a bet between God and the devil, God boasts that Job is blameless and loves Him, the devil thinks otherwise, a little later and then each says “Okay, it’s on!” (well not those exact words). Soon Job’s life goes downhill and the next thirty chapters are comprised of speeches made by him and his friends. Then in the end God appears to straighten things out and tells Job “I run the universe and know more than you do, who are you to accuse me of being unjust?” After that God slams Job’s friends for their folly and blesses Job with more than he had before. Life gets crazy sometimes, there are some days when God feels distant and life is hard. I know that it’s not so much of a big deal but my life got a little crazy a few weeks ago with finals, I was in a bad slump, I was sick, and just plain exhausted after a long year. There are a couple verses my youth leader marked in the Bible he gave me from Habakkuk 3: 17-18 “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my savior.” That sounds tough doesn’t it, no food at all and no crops, when I read that I imagine a dusty dry field, but still Habakkuk has hope that God will give him strength. There is no answer to why bad things happen, why good people have to get sick, I wish I knew but I don’t and God doesn’t tell us. But He does tell us this that He loves us and is in control and that we need to trust Him.

Where is our treasure?

Well I finished reading Job and now am reading Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes is an interesting and very sad book, most people think it was written by King Solomon and I think the relevance to today’s culture is amazing. You know how people always say “Oh, even though rich people seem to be happy with all the possessions they have, they aren’t”? Ecclesiastes proves that. King Solomon was extremely blessed, he was wise, rich, popular…he had it all. But at some time in his life, he lost it. He married foreign women and followed their religions which resulted in him leaving God. The book Ecclesiastes is pretty shocking, how could someone with so much stuff open up and say it’s all meaningless? Well without God, it is. When life becomes a competition to see who has the most stuff in the end it is meaningless. I love to play monopoly with my friends, but when the game is over it’s just that, a game we pick up all the pieces and put them back. In Matthew Jesus said to “store up for [ourselves] treasure in heaven…” Matthew 6: 20. All this stuff we have: houses, cars, books, computers, they’re all meaningless unless they are used for God. Life here on earth is short, I was thinking about how sad it is that Michael Jackson died so young and the really tragic thing is that such a gifted man gave his life away to nothing. Solomon had the potential to be like his father, “a man after God’s heart” but he threw everything away. We have the potential to be tools in God’s hands, to do great things through Him we just have to let go of the stuff from this world and follow.

Happy Father's Day

Now that I have free time I can write. I just have to say, while not playing baseball for half a year is horrible, not writing for a week has been near Yesterday was Father’s day so I was doing some thinking. Being a father seems like a tough job. Everyday my dad gets up early and goes to work, then he comes home and sometimes cooks dinner, plays catch/ drills with me, listens to how everyone’s day was, talks with me about how I’m doing, works late into the night and takes the dogs out. That’s a lot and I want to say “Dad, thank you!” My pastor was talking about how God is like a father to us, and I am blessed with a very good father but some aren’t and how that taints the fatherly image. I was once asked what I picture God like, and while some people said something between a wizard and sci-fi type person, I said a cross between my dad and grandfather, because God is very kind, but also very firm. God is like that, He loves us immensely more than we could imagine. It’s amazing how much He loves us but like I said He can also be firm. Proverbs tells parents to discipline their children because it’s good for them (that’s a paraphrase) what parent could be called good if they don’t discipline their child. Nowadays people get the idea of parents as their best friends. While it’s good to be friends with your parents, it’s bad to see them as only that, my dad is my father; I do my best to do what he says. It’s the same with God, God is our friend but He’s also God, He is an all powerful, mighty well, God, I don’t capitalize every pronoun for just for fun, there is a reason. It’s like the fear of the Lord thing, yes God loves us, yes He is and wants to be our friend but we can’t just leave it there. Anyway those are my thoughts and here is a list of great men/ fathers of the Bible: Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Elisha, Elijah, Job, Joseph, Paul, John, and Peter.

Sorry

I would like to apologize for the lack of posts in the past week, due to finals I have no free time at all to write so it’s be a week and a half until I resume posting. My finals are next week and a few days after the weekend so I’ll have a lot of time to think until then and a lot to write about. Once again sorry, I really don't like having to stop writing but I have to study.

Go Red Sox

I have been looking at the Sox this week and they are shaping up to be a very good team. The starting rotation has been very strong, Lester was amazing, Beckett was incredible, Dice-K wasn’t great but he reminded me more of his performance last year than last month Wakefield, well he got the win. As much as I hate to do it I have to admit that the Yankees are a much better team this year than last year, the pitching has been getting stronger and the hitting is very good. The question that remains is this: can the red Sox handle it? Can the pitching staff quest the loud Yankee bats and the offense pop? With a sweep of the tigers the Sox are still tied at first with the Yankees with a record of 32-22, hopefully they can win a few games and the Yankees can lose a few to give them the lead.

What We Need

I’ve started reading “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis, it’s a great book but that’s not my point here, my point is a section that stood out to me. Lewis wrote “God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.” That stood out to me because it is so simple and true yet we often forget it. We sin; we look to people and things to fill us up. We may not do this all the time, we may at times only be filled with the love of God, but at one time or another we lose that connection just a little bit and find happiness in something else. Note, I use the word happiness, not joy; when we fill ourselves up on something else for a moment it satisfies us, but that feeling leaves as quickly as it comes. Then what, we need to go to the next thing, and the next, and it goes on infinitely. But when we fill ourselves up with God, He is so full of everything we need that he sustains us no matter what. I used to find my happiness in baseball, I learned in a hard way that, that is not the way to go, I still like to play baseball, but I’ve realized that while anything in general may be great and be a thing we find happiness in, it’s only for the moment and it can’t be the only thing.

Take the First Step

I was thinking about my last blog post, and I realized there is a danger that follows my line of thinking. I said that we need faith to believe in God, and that 100% certainty isn’t required. People could take this in two ways, either saying “Oh, just because I can’t physically or logically prove to somebody that God exists (like in an experiment), that isn’t going to stop me from having faith.” The bad approach is to say “Oh, I don’t know whether or not there is a God, but I’m going to have faith!” As I said in my last post, people peppered me with questions and asked me to “prove it” when I found that I couldn’t physically prove anything I lost my step, but then I was reminded that faith doesn’t need proof, it’s actually belief in the absence of proof. The best picture of faith I can think of is from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” when Indiana is standing at the edge of the cliff staring at the “invisible” bridge. In the book it says that there is a walkway across the cliff, but Indy can’t see it from hi point of view, he then takes a deep breath and steps onto the bridge. Faith is like that, I can’t see God, but I have my Bible, my pastor, my friends and family, and they point me to God. I took the step four years ago and I found that there’s way more than thin air, I’m still taking steps now with the help of those around me. Faith is a hard thing to have, some days it feels like God is right by my side, others I wonder where He went, and boy am I glad Jesus said all we need is a mustard seed. While a mustard seed may be small it’s enough to take the first step.