Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Sports Fan and a Real Hero

I'm old enough to remember watching the first Super Bowl and I was really disappointed when the Baltimore Colts moved to Indiana because I had followed them as a kid. Growing up in Ohio we had lots of professional sports to follow and football was the sport to talk about. But when I married and moved to Indiana all we had was Bobby Knight and I didn't care much for his act.

In the meantime while raising kids I lost track of sports and the teams and where they are from. Professional sports became too much about money and getting together to drink beer and when the marching bands quit marching and the halftime became entertainment I quit watching.

However, when Tony Dungy came to Indiana every time I saw him on the news or during a game he looked like a genuine guy. And then last year when his son died I watched him from a distance and all that I saw showed a man filled with grace and humility.

I haven't watched a whole game this year, but I sat down and watched the last part of the Colts game and when I saw the coach calmly standing through all the pressure I wanted him to win. Not the Colts or Peyton Manning, but Mr. Dungy. Because he's brought a little sanity to the sport.

From the Indianapolis Star: "Dungy, 51, is a man of deep convictions, and he is not always motivated by the same things as others. He repeatedly has said that he is not a "lifer," that he does not plan to grow old as a coach, but neither has he decided when to get out, or whether the Super Bowl could be his last game.

"It's something I haven't thought a whole lot about," Dungy said. "I'll sit down with (owner) Jim (Irsay) at the end of the year and I'll sit down with my wife and we'll do just what we do at the end of every year.

"First thing, you have to make sure they want you back. I never take that for granted anymore."

Big Brother

GO COLTS!!

Global Warming and Go

I've been trying to figure out this game called Go that my son is interested in and while reading how to play one instructor said that Go cannot be simulated on a computer to the satisfaction of avid players. And that's because there are so many human choices involved and that it's nearly impossible for a game to be played twice.

So that leads me to global warming. If the creator is in charge of the atmosphere and the galaxy and our little world then what makes us think that we can create computer models to simulate the weather and the atmosphere and predict global warming. From my standpoint there are too many variables and a Creator with choices that we could never simulate.

And if the most brilliant weathermen(or women) in the world can only predict the weather for a few days at a time and many times they are close but not perfect in their predictions then how could anyone say what will happen weatherwise in 20, 30 or a hundred years?

I've been in love with rural living all my life and I respect the earth and take good care of the place I've been blessed to receive. But we're starting to micromanage the environment and it might just be that nothing we do matters because God in his plan has made the earth a little warmer.

"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding
when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
“Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb,
when I made clouds its garment
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed limits for it
and set bars and doors,
and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?
“Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
and caused the dawn to know its place,
that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth,
and the wicked be shaken out of it?
It is changed like clay under the seal,
and its features stand out like a garment.

From Job 38, ESV

Saturday, January 06, 2007

How to be Spiritually Minded

A great sermon by John Piper on how to keep your thinking spiritual with this quote:

"Remember Jesus’ warning about what chokes spiritual life: cares, riches and pleasures of life."

Those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. (Luke 8:14)

The cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. (Mark 4:19)

Whom or what do you love?

"Love is that powerful and prevalent passion, by which all the faculties and inclinations of the soul are determined, and on which both its perfection and happiness depend. The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love. He who loveth mean and sordid things doth thereby become base and vile, but a noble and well-placed affection doth advance and improve the spirit into a conformity with the perfections which it loves. "

The young man, Henry Scougal, who wrote this died before he was thirty. You can read the entire book here.