Always There

I had the idea for this post a long while back, but unfortunately frequent track practices have kept me from writing. I was reading Numbers chapter 11 and read about how the Israelites were complaining (again) about how they didn’t have any meat, so God gave them a ton of quail. Before He did He was talking to Moses and said “Is the Lord’s arm too short?” Numbers 11:25. God then shows just how long His arm is as He follows through in His promise to Moses. I’ve faced disappointment before, I’ve been let down, and to tell the truth it really stinks, nobody likes to set their hopes up only to be let down. God never lets us down, He never leaves us and never gives up on us, He doesn’t forget. He may step out of our lives, nothing may seem to make sense, but God never steps fully out of the picture, He is always there to lend a hand and support us in our struggles. I don’t think the Israelites fully understood that, I don’t think there are many people who fully understand that even now. I’ve heard that people often forget about God when things are good, and only turn to Him when life takes a wrong turn. I usually act the opposite; I find it is easier to praise God when things are great in my life, when I have a grasp on everything around me. But we need to remember that even in those dark times God is there, His arms are never too short, His help is never too little, and His love never runs out.

Change We Can Believe In

One thing I really noticed about Moses in Exodus-Numbers is how much he changes. I’ve somewhat been stuck on the theme of spiritual growth and the importance of getting “away” to spend time with God during this Lent, and this is a continuation of it. Moses first encounters God at the burning bush and when God asks him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt he gives the weak excuse after weak excuse until he finally says “O Lord please send someone else to do it” Exodus 4:13. God’s answer was obviously no. Imagine it, you have a once in a lifetime chance to be great, to do something meaningful, and you ask someone else to do it!? I mean, this is more than catching in Fenway; this is seeing the miracles of God firsthand and talking to Him face to face! Turn the pages in your Bible a lot farther to chapter 32 with the story of the golden calf and you see a very different Moses, one who replies to God’s anger by saying “But now please forgive their sin – but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.” Exodus 32:32 (ha, funny coincidence). In other words Moses is acting as the captain God wanted him to be and is prepared to go down with the ship. The same man that said “Oh, please get someone else” is now saying “If they’re going down, as the man in charge I’m going down too.” Moses had no idea where he would be after the burning bush, but he trusted God and took a chance on life, he got away from it all and enjoyed a life greater than that of the prince of Egypt. God can take the ordinary and make it extraordinary, but first we need to have faith, be willing to change, and enjoy the ride.

Spring - Mine and the Sox

To shock the world I am not playing baseball this spring, I will start up in the summer. I figure I don’t really fit in where the team is heading so it is better that I don’t try out. What I’m doing instead is Track, I’m most likely throwing the discus and javelin (still throwing stuff so not much changes) and running the 100m. It’s a new experience and I hope God is with me and that I’ll do well. Despite not playing baseball I’ll still give hitting tips and still play in the summer and hopefully have a rebound from last year. Also The Sox have been great so far (yes I know it is just Spring Training) but the pitching has been excellent and the so called lackluster offense has been pretty good, good enough to propel the Sox to a 7-3 record, I guess that wacky idea of having a good defensive team actually works.

This s a Tough One

I was in church today and the subject of media came up, but it quickly turned to movies. Basically the question was “What movies should we as Christians watch?” It’s a valid question and a tough one to answer, especially because God doesn’t exactly give us a list to follow. What we do have though is His law and Jesus’ word. Looking at my list of my favorite movies you’d probably notice I love comedy movies, especially ones from the 80’s. While extremely funny there are also a few scenes that aren’t appropriate so how do I reconcile that with what God says in the Bible? Jesus says in Matthew that a “tree is recognized by its fruit” 12:33. And in Mark that “your eye is the lamp of your body…see to it then that the light within you is not darkness” 11:34-35. When we view things and hear things that aren’t godly they ruin us on the inside and after enough time it shows on the outside. While it is impossible to “see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil” in our modern world it is not impossible to guard ourselves from it to a degree. Does this mean I shun every movie and stick to cartoon Disney classics? No, (while I don’t mind a few) Jesus calls us to be “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” Matt. 10:16, in other words we live in a fallen world and we need to discern right from wrong and not be tainted by the badness around us. I cannot escape the ungodliness in the media but I can do my best to ensure that it doesn’t affect me. I can choose not to watch a movie based on its content, if there is foul language or lots of inappropriate content I don’t have to watch it, but if there is one scene in one movie I can also skip over it (which is what I usually do). It is a gray area, it makes no sense to shun the world but at the same time we need to watch what goes in because it affects what comes out. C.S. Lewis writes that morality is like a big fleet of ships in an ocean, if one of the ships is going in the wrong direction it will crash into another ship and thus needs the correct course (morality) but if the ship starts in the right course but gradually rots in the inside then it will eventually steer into the wrong direction. It’s a gray area but remember it is a slow and gradual change that we hardly notice until it is too late.

When Following the Rules Becomes Breaking Them

The thing about reading Exodus is that it starts out with the story of Moses and all the excitement of crossing the Red Sea and then moves into the series of Laws which carries over into the book of Leviticus which is basically a rule book. Whenever I read this I have a few reactions, for one I get bogged down in reading, and two I think to myself how hard it would be to follow every law. There are about 30-40 chapters of laws, that’s a lot of rules! That would be extremely hard to follow every single one, so hard in fact that you would eventually start to focus more on the laws then where they come from. And that is what the Pharisees did; they focused so hard on each law that they eventually forgot the number one law, “You shall have no other gods before ME”, Exodus 20:3. The Pharisees were so absorbed with being like God that they forgot why they were doing it in the first place- to be closer to Him and in the end they never focused on Him and instead alienated themselves from Him. God’s law is important, C.S. Lewis writes that He instilled in us a sense of morality that He clearly defines to break away from that standard would be chaos. But we can’t forget why we do the things we do, if I focus so much on doing x good things in a day they lose their meaning, if I focus on living a certain way at all times inevitably I do x good things a day. It’s like hitting, if I focus on every mechanic in my swing while up at bat then I will be late every time, but if I resolve to have good mechanics every time I get up at bat I will get hits, and hit for a high average too. God’s law is important, but when we focus more on the creation than the Creator then we disobey #1 and thus disobey them all.

Pretty Far

How far is the east from the west? Sounds like a strange question but I was reading Psalm 103 and came across verse 12 “as far as the east is from the west, so far as He removed our transgressions from us.” That’s pretty far, immeasurable actually, if you were to try to go east as far as you could from the west you would eventually end up where you started only to keep going again, forever. That is the amazing grace that was realized in the Gospel, that God can take us who are sinful and throw our sins away so far that they are behind us. In the “Our Father” prayer Jesus taught us it asks God to forgive us as we forgive the sins of others but I had a thought, aren’t we also to forgive ourselves. Repentance comes from the Greek word (I think) that means to change our minds, and dwelling on the past only dooms us to revisit it. Not to say that we should forget the past and therefore not learn from it, but the point is that God literally forgets our sins, if He didn’t then the cross wouldn’t have meant much at all, but it is through Jesus’ sacrifice that we are forgiven and our sins are forgotten. That truly is an amazing miracle.

Our Need for Friends

This post is somewhat out of order of the list of posts I wanted to write but I really wanted to write this now before I forget. I’ve finished reading Genesis and am now reading Exodus and I came across a story that I definitely remember but never gave any thought to. It comes from Exodus Ch. 18, and basically Moses runs into his father-in-law, Jethro, while leading the Israelites into the desert. Well, what does Moses do? He gives Jethro a tour, kind of like saying “See, I’m doing all right” All goes well until Moses serves as a judge and then Jethro says “What is this you are doing to the people?” 18:14, so Moses basically says “What does it look like? I’m serving as judge – somebody has to do it” to which Jethro replies “What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. This work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone” 18:17. Sometimes I can get too used to doing things on my own and not asking for help or seeking the guidance I should. It’s an easy trap to fall into, but the thing is this, God didn’t create us to be a bunch of hermits in the woods, some time or another we need other people around us, people we love and trust to guide us and give us strength when we need it. Jethro did just that for Moses, he knew what it was like to tire out and need a friend so he acted as one to Moses so that Moses wouldn’t fall down while leading the Israelites to the Promised Land. Jethro finishes his speech with “If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain…” 18:23. God is always there for us to lift us up, and we should always make sure to surround ourselves with friends, because we can’t and shouldn’t go it alone.

The Silence is Deafening

I finished Genesis a while back and wanted to write this post but never had the time. I was thinking about my post about how Joseph matured so much and had such great faith but what struck me was that it never directly said that God spoke/appeared to him. A lot of times I hear that God doesn’t do what He did in the Bible anymore but really when you think about it Joseph, from the outside, was a regular Joe. But the cool thing is this, God transformed Joseph throughout his life to bring him to a point where he knew God and lived an amazing life for Him. Joseph never mentions God until he is before the Pharaoh many years after being sold to the Egyptians. He spent years in jail in silence; he could have been bitter and said “Huh! I don’t know what my crazy father was saying about God, I mean look at me!” Instead he came to know God through the silence, through the pain and ultimately lived his childhood dreams of becoming great, but God’s way. In the end Joseph’s brothers are afraid that after the death of Jacob (their father) Joseph will get revenge (sounds like something out of The Godfather Part II) but Joseph turns and says “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” Genesis 50: 20 (that sure didn’t happen in the movie). I used to think that God’s silence was His way of punishing me for doing something wrong, now I’ve seen it is His way of preparing me to do something good.

Red Sox Predictions

I’ve been thinking about the poll to the right and how it looks like the odds may be stacked up against the Red Sox this season (and today’s game certainly doesn’t help my case) but I think the Sox have a legitimate shot in the 2010 season. Looking back on the ’09 season I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how the offseason trades impact the Sox this year and here’s what I came up with. If you think about the wins and losses as a math equation the Sox come on top. Here we go, (these are all extremely rough estimates); I’ll try to divide it into categories.

Losses last year that won’t happen again
Lugo and Green: 10 games
Pitching staff: 15 games
LF defensively: 5 games
3B defensively: 5 games
Varitek: 15 games

Total: 50 games lost last year that will be avoided this year.

Now wins that won’t happen this year
Bay offensively: 15
Lowell offensively: 15 -20 games (remember Lowell hit for a much higher average than Bay)
Ortiz’s decline: 10 games

Total: 45 wins that won’t happen this year.

Which leaves the Sox ahead roughly, by 5 gives giving them a 100-62 record. While this is hardly exact it does make sense and the Sox could have a decent season when you think about the bad pitching and defense they lost and how they replaced it with a much better team.