Another One?

Like many Sox fans I hoped for the best and suspected the worst, all I can say is I am sad to hear that Ortiz was using steroids. I knew it, I hoped I was wrong but I knew that he was using PED’s, 50 homeruns out of nowhere? The sudden decline and knee injuries? All I can say is that I don’t think he used heavily considering that he doesn’t look much bigger than when he was with the Twins, I think juiced in 03 – 06 and stopped 07 – 09. Another thing I will say, I don’t care if he used steroids, he’s not using them now and is hitting better than ever all it took was for him to believe in himself. Ortiz faked his way into being Big Papi, now he’s earning it. I still am strongly against steroids; there are no short cuts to true greatness, the only path is hard work and determination.

Why Name Tags Aren't All That Great

I have to say that I feel somewhat funny after writing that post (not in the humorous sense but in an odd sense) I feel almost like I woke up after a long sleep, or walked from a dark room into the light, I hope and pray that God will continue to reveal to me who He is instead of who I imagined Him to be. The greatest danger is to characterize God, to refer to Him in human or at least worldly terms this brings Him down to our level only for us to realize our character god isn’t real and not even close to the real God, this among other things is my error it’s easy to imagine God as a large man in a throne in (as Lewis calls it ) a “sky palace” but Heaven and God are both unimaginably hard things to describe and should be left without description. To say “Heaven is like a different world that is white and pure and perfect and golden and musical…” is false, to say Heaven is where God is, is true (Lewis talks about this, don’t think this is completely my own thinking though part of it is). God is too big to be defined, I guess you could describe Him the way He did, He is who He is Exodus 3: 14, that is the only worldly description available for us to use.

Really Long Post About Faith

C.S. Lewis said in his article “Is Theism Important?” that there are two types of faith, faith A and faith B. Faith A is what I am looking for, physical proof that God is real, real knowledge, for example I know that the grass is green. Faith B is different; it is more of a trust or confidence, like in family or friends. I agree with Lewis if we try to get the “religious experience” from pure knowledge then we’ll get nothing. I had faith B, when I first went to church I gained faith B, when I began to pray and read the Bible I had faith B, now I’m trying to find faith A. To put it simply faith A doesn’t exist here on earth the only time it did was a short segment of history called “Jesus’ life”. True faith requires trust, or a better word confidence. I don’t like to use trust in the sense that we “blindly” trust, which it implies to me; confidence is trust but in a different way, it is trusting ourselves. I trust my intellect when taking a test, if I didn’t I would fail. I trust my athleticism when I play baseball, if I didn’t I would be an error and strike out machine. I would trust my instincts if a strange person is walking toward me, if I didn’t I could get hurt. We trust ourselves all the time, we are confident in our abilities and also friends, for example I could say I am confident that my friend didn’t steal (hypothetically) my CD, or I trust him enough with access to it because I am confident he won’t. I am confident that the men who wrote the Bible thousands of years ago told the truth, one, because I am confident in historical accuracy but also I trust that because the historical parts are accurate it is true. I hope this isn’t confusing cause I got some more. If we attempt to prove the existence of God through logic only we will fail, of course there is some logic but then that isn’t faith, it’s knowledge. I love my family, it can’t be logically proven but it is true, I trust myself to know the difference between fact and fiction, I know what happened to me July 15, 2005 and the April before (fact) I know how Christianity changed me more than anything else (fact) I know I heard God’s voice (or a voice that wasn’t human or audibly heard but heard all the same: fact), can I trust myself with this knowledge and pursue faith B along with the logical sense I have? This is a long post but the idea excites me that Lewis pursued the subject I’ve struggled to grasp, I honestly feel God pushed me to buy this book (which I almost didn’t but felt I should) and pushed me to read it and then had me search for this article. Real faith comes through experience I trust my friends because I know them, I trust my family because they raised me, I trust myself because I have to, I trust God because He has revealed Himself to me. God enters our lives periodically (though no routinely) to reveal who He is, Jesus did it to the disciples and so does His Father to us. God showed me grace in hopes I would believe, He showed me love in hope I would return it He will come back again and show me another wonder of life it is up to me to both recognize and return the gift of faith He showers us with.

There's a Light at the End of this Tunnel

I have just one question, how long? I know why this is happening to me but how long will this pain go on, a life without God is unbearable, I’ve been cramming anything I can into my heart just to fill the emptiness, it’s like putting water in a colander, no matter how much I put in it will never be filled up. I read something today that gives me courage, I remembered that I am loved, I remembered the first time I went to my church and felt the love of Jesus for the first time the feeling that I am cared for. I hope God comes back shortly but if He doesn’t I hope I can be strong till then. All I want right now is for this to be in the past, to sit on my front porch with my Bible and enjoy my life, to go to church and feel God’s presence, to write with meaning and clarity, that is what I want and hope for. All I have now is the prayers of my friends and family adn a glimmer of hope for the future.

What is "loving the world" and How do We Stop?

I’ve been going to my dad’s Bible study and lately we’ve been reading 1 John. One verse that stood out to me was 2: 15, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” But what exactly does that mean? We can’t go around hating the world, it would be weird to wake up and look out the window and say “Gosh I hate this planet we live on!” First off God made the world, second when He made it Genesis 1:10 says that “God saw that [the earth] was good” so to claim the earth is “bad” would call God’s creation bad and thus insult Him. Think about it this way, let’s say you work all day on this special dinner and then your guest comes and spits it out. But then what does hating the world mean? The key word in the verse is “love”, we are to love God, love Jesus, love others as ourselves, but to love the world would put it in the same esteem. Also world in the Biblical sense is not the dirt under our feet but the things of the world: activities, people, money, sin… I like to play baseball, I like to cook, I like my job but if those things ever reach the importance level of God in my life then there is trouble. If I skip my devotions to get to work or neglect my prayers because I’m tired after watching the Sox game, and who knows I could be late for work or really tired, but we can’t let the world get in the way of God. What do we do then? Well a start would be to find a way to integrate God into our life, for example I make a cross sign on my chest and look up before every at-bat and I try to be the kindest and most helpful person at work. It can get tough but we must remember the promise, 1 John 2: 17 “but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”

Dissapointed Sox Fan

Hopefully I will be proved wrong, but at the moment the Red Sox are under preforming, they aren't hitting and the pitching is shaky. I don't know what else to say, the only guys who are producing are Pedroia, Youk, and Ortiz; I don't even want to know what happened to Bay but he is headed for a below .200 average if he keeps this up. I sure hope the Sox pull it together cause right now watching their games just makes me angry and sad. The Yankees are going to take the lead and the Sox are headed for a long and tough pennant race.

Catching in Fenway

Tough Love

I was sitting and reading a book by C.S. Lewis called “God in the Dock” it’s a book of essays and letters that Lewis wrote over his writing career it’s really good and I recommend it. Anyway I was sitting in the chair reading and being very tired I dozed off a bit and was thinking about how strong my faith was a few years ago and how weak it is now. I also was thinking about a song, and how I used to listen to a lot of Christian music and then it was like someone poked me in the back and told me to get up. It’s like somebody as whispering it in my ear (God may have been) but I realized that my “faith” a few years ago was just excitement and hype, a belief based on emotion and now the emotion is gone and I am left wondering what happened. I then realized that that is why I hear people, old and young, talk about how when they were younger they had doubts because they lost that hype. When we are newborn Christians God feeds us with milk, He is like a protective mother always watching over us but when we grow up (which can take a year to many years) He takes a step away – not to watch us become confused and leave Him but to help us mature. At some point in my life I was fed solid food instead of milk, and then real food instead of the jarred baby food. I could have been perfectly content to keep on living a life off of milk but then I wouldn’t have the nutrients to grow up and enjoy the physically demanding life I do now. We could be perfectly happy living a life based on continual hype but in the long run it won’t help us at all and we’ll miss out on the real excitement of adult spirituality. It’s a “tough love” thing that God does to us and He ingrains it into His creation, at some point in life He lets go so that we may grab on.

Major League Debut: 7/19/09

Today I caught at Fenway! It was amazing and humbling. I was surprised that I was not as excited or hyped up as I thought I would be, it was weird I stepped on the field and it’s just silencing. I got to sit in the dugout when I wasn’t catching and that was really cool, it didn’t hit me then but to think of it now I was sitting in a dugout and playing on a field that is almost 100 years old and has seen many great players. I caught four times for about 10 – 15 minutes each and having not caught in a couple months is was tough but fun. It’s amazing the people I saw there were groups that were giving donations ( I would catch for one group) and there were small kids, old people, cancer survivors, and even at one time cancer patients, it was amazing. My dad took tons of pictures which I will post later, it hasn’t really hit me but tomorrow I think it will. I just have to thank God for this, you can’t make this stuff up!

My Faith Struggle

I am one step closer to being out of my spiritual struggle. This has been going on for a few months in which I have desperately tried to believe but found myself just out of reach of the faith that I needed. My dad took me to his Bible study, I was a little nervous but the guys that were there were really nice and funny and I had a great time. Anyway, these were all older men, much older that I am and we started talking; one guy comes up and talks about how when he was in college he had doubts about his faith and stopped believing for a while. When I heard that it hit me like a truck. Here is an older, wiser man who admits that he had doubts, I was amazed because the same thing happened to me. Throughout our lives the devil does his best to separate us from God and keep it that way, he can’t stand seeing us grow closer to God and will through anything he can at us: sin, doubt, addiction, the list goes on and on. It is our job to stick through it, to buckle down and say no to the devil. I tried to believe and I am still trying because I know that there is a light at the end of this tunnel. I’ve listed to and read a fair amount of testimonies but nothing hit me harder than what that man said, I thought to myself “Geez, if a guy can go from believing to doubting and back to believing this has got to be more real that I have been thinking.’ I hope to have more faith soon and I pray God will give me strength.

A Day at Fenway

You won’t believe what I am doing tomorrow so I’ll post pictures later to prove it. I am catching at Fenway Park for the Jimmy Fund “fantasy day” event. I work at a baseball camp and my boss called up (knowing I catch) and asked me if I would like to help out, of course I said yes so I’ll be at Fenway tomorrow. I see it as such a great example of the way God rewards perseverance. Here I was in the spring sad that I was cut and that same day I went to the baseball facility to catch for a pitching class and here I am. I thank God for His grace and kindness and the opportunities He gave me to serve Him.

Here are a few Pictures from Oregon

Rose Garden

Mt. Hood

Haystack Rock

4th of July

Some Really Good Drills

Here are a few great baseball drills that really help you develop a quick and powerful swing, quickness is key in hitting it doesn’t matter how strong you are, if you aren’t quick you won’t hit. What most people don’t know is that hitting is all lower body; most guys use aluminum bats and develop a long swing that is all arms. To fix this I take my bat in my left hand (I’m right-handed) and choke up and then take about 10-20 swings off my tee to start off my workouts. This will help you bottom hand (because I’m right-handed that is my left) get through the zone quickly and pull your bat through. If you ever watch the homerun derby you see guys flicking their bats out and smacking the ball; that is what this teaches you to do. Next is a BP drill, you get someone to give you underhand soft toss, but they do it “rapid fire” style. Basically they flip you one ball after one another helps you get a quicker swing and better reflexes. Those are some more of my hitting tips I hope they help you wherever you play, but remember it’s all about having fun and giving the glory to God.

What the Psalms taught Me

Well this is a cool moment, this is the first post written on an airplane; I scribbled down some thoughts while on my trip to Oregon (I keep saying it but I’ll get the pictures up later). I wrote earlier that I came to a rocky spot in my faith a friend suggested that I read the Psalms. I’ve read the Psalms before but never thought much of them, then as I opened my Bible it hit me. I used to envy other people for how “rock solid” their faith seemed and if there is anyone to envy it’s King David. King David was chosen by God to be king and was often called a “man after God’s own heart” but wait a minute! The same guy that wrote “It is good to praise the Lord and make music to your name O Most High” Psalm 92 also wrote “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Psalm 22. David’s faith wasn’t perfect, one glance at the Psalms shows that at times even he got lost. I just started reading “Surprised by Joy” written by C.S. Lewis and one thing that shocks me is that the faith giant that wrote classics like “Mere Christianity” and “The Screwtape letters” struggled and even was an atheist for a while! God can use everyone, even someone who once rejected Him, and one thing I noticed is every time my mind wanders off, every time I get a little too far away He always draws me back to Him. Life is not a perfectly paved journey it’s more like a dusty dirt road; I fell down in my faith I still stumble sometimes but I know that God never gives up and never stops drawing us toward Himself.

Keep on trying

My summer baseball season ended today with a 14 – 4 win that I was glad to say I was a part of. Offensively I’ve never been great, I can generally hit okay and demonstrate some power but this whole season was terrible. A combination of bad luck and poor mechanics led to a slump that drilled bad self esteem into my head. Then I went on a vacation to Oregon (I’ll post pictures later) and came back today, I was completely out of it my timing was off my arm was weak and I couldn’t play any defense. My first at bat resulted in a strike out, and then I got up for my last at bat in the season and BANG! The count was 1-2 I saw the pitcher give the catcher a look, he threw it inside and high and I smacked it deep into left field back by the wall. While I was in Oregon I kept complaining about how it kept on raining in MA. Little did I know I would soon thank God for the terrible weather that caused a game to be rained out for when I got back. I strongly believe in perseverance and I think God does too, no matter how hard something is or how bad the situation is we’ve got to keep trying. I could have given up and said I was a rotten hitter but then I wouldn’t have gotten that double.