You Are Here > Popular content / Popular content
The Lord corrected Samuel’s natural inclination to judge people by their outward appearance—their height, weight, and other physical features. He called Samuel to look more deeply into people’s heart, as God does.
In the world of sports, it is easier and quicker to make judgments by what we see. Everyone who walks on to the field of competition immediately sees where the largest players are. What cannot be so easily seen is the nature of a player’s heart. Qualities like courage, perseverance, love, and loyalty cannot be observed by a glance. These are qualities of the heart and require a deeper look into the player and his values.
A few weeks ago, my basketball coach asked me to consider playing junior varsity instead of varsity. At that time, I made the decision that if he ultimately decided to put me on JV, I would quit playing basketball and concentrate all my focus on softball and cross-country. Just a few days ago, he asked me to play JV basketball, for my own sake--"To get more playing time." It was a tough choice, but I decided to decline his offer, hang up my sneakers and pick up a softball glove.
BUSTED! You know what I mean. You're 3 years old, not quite tall enough to reach the cookie jar yet; but you want one! So, being the sneaky and bright little kid that you are, you push a chair up to the counter, climb up and reach as far as you can to pull the cookie jar closer. When you get it, you smile that accomplished little smirk just before removing the lid, happily glancing down into the jar and putting your little fingers down inside. Just as you find the PERFECT cookie, Mom walks in. Yep, you've just been caught!
I was listening to a song the other day. It's called "Give It All" by the band Rise Against. I usually listen to it for my warm-ups in sports. Everytime I listen to it, I get in my head, I'm going to give my all on this match, game, run, or whatever. But I got to thinking the other day, do we really give it OUR all?
At the college that I attended, we referred to long-distance runners as “jar heads.” We figured that each day they would unscrew their heads, take out their brains, and then run an unbelievable amount of miles before returning and putting their brains back in their heads.
I say this all in good fun, obviously. I have always admired distance runners and think that distance running is an amazing ability. When these runners race, they set their minds on finishing the race. Lap after lap they strain through sore muscles and tough conditions to finish what they started.
We were in the regional finals of the Virginia high school golf tournament. I was a first year golf coach. My player, Gabe, was tied for the individual championship and was playing in the final round against the defending champion. He had just birdied the thirteenth hole to take a one shot lead with five holes to play.
I suddenly realized that I wasn’t sure what to say or do. Even though I had coached and officiated over a twenty-year period, I had never been a golf coach. Basketball and soccer were my forte. What strategy do you offer in a solitary sport like golf to a young man who must perform alone under pressure? Coaches are supposed to know everything and be ready in any situation. I felt I had little to offer.
Have you seen the Nike commercial where the pro athlete leans into the microphone and proclaims, “My better is better than your better”? In this commercial, top-tier athletes from a variety of sports are shown performing some serious training and drills, all with the goal of bettering their game. It’s a commercial advertising Nike’s SPARQ gear—SPARQ stands for Speed, Performance, Agility, Reaction and Quickness. But the commercial serves as more than just an ad for Nike to sell a product. It’s also a reminder of the effort it takes in the off-season to prepare for what lies ahead.
Hockey Chat: We wear all kinds of gear when we’re on the ice. We put our trust into engineered plastic and padding to be our shield. Knowing that it’s there, we feel stronger and braver. When we get hit with a puck or stick in that area, we are so thankful that we have that protection!
Olympic speed-skater Chad Hedrick was part of a two-medal finish in the 1,000-meter finals Wednesday night, winning a bronze medal. After winning gold in the 2006 Olympics, Hedrick is one of the most prominent figures in Olympic speed-skating today. Yesterday, Hedrick was featured on the radio broadcast of Haven Today with the key line of the intro, “Chad Hedrick is not the same Chad Hedrick of four years ago.”
During this interview, Hedrick discussed his recent conversion experience. He admitted that most people knew him as a guy who worked hard and played hard. In describing his commitment to Christ, he said, “Now I find myself…really living a godly life now. I feel like I’m going in the right direction.”
To kick off the summer vacation, my youngest daughter and I went on a 20-mile, three-day back-packing trip. I have been on several trips, but this was her first. We were hiking a section of the Monadnock-Sunapee Trail and followed their guidebook and trail markers for the three days of hiking. By following their book, we found shelters or platforms on which to spend the night and we found plenty of water to pump into our water bottles.
When Jean Driscoll was a teenager, she had all of the same negative ideas about wheelchairs as everyone else. They were cumbersome and limiting, and using one meant the end of any shot at a normal life. And that’s exactly how she felt when, as a high school sophomore, she was forced to use one herself.
“I thought my life was over,” Driscoll candidly says.
FCA Camp was awesome again this year. If you’ve never been to one, I highly encourage you to check one out in the future!
What makes FCA Camp so great? What is it about camp that we miss when we leave? Why do we want camp to last longer than a week? Think about it: FCA Camp offers an environment in which we are encouraged to be in God’s Word, to freely Worship Him, to enjoy fellowship with His people and to spend time with Him in Prayer. For one short week it seems that we can push away the things of this world and focus entirely on Him. We are truly abiding in Him. And when we abide in Him the things of this world fade away. Relationships are sweeter, worship is more focused and prayer seems richer.
I became a baseball fan during the magical season of 1961. I lived for the trek to the mailbox for the morning paper. Turning to the sports section, I would devour the scores, especially those of the New York Yankees, where the nation focused on the home run race between Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. These two players fascinated me. Though Maris won the home run race that year, Mickey Mantle was my hero. He moved with grace and hit with power, and his statistics were incredibly impressive.
As I grew older, however, I learned of many poor choices made by Mantle. His decadent lifestyle and forty-year abuse of alcohol had shortened his career, prevented him from reaching his full potential, and clouded his mind.
Hockey Chat: The current engraver, Louise St. Jacques is the engraver of the Stanley Cup every year. During engraving, the Cup is disassembled from the top down. The band being engraved is clamped onto a homemade circular jig that creates a steel background for stamping. Special hammers with different head-weights are used to strike against a letter-punch to sink each letter into the silver. When complete, it is another part of the awesome masterpiece.
My all-time favorite comedian is Brian Regan. He is funny and clean--a hard combination to find these days. In one of his routines, he talks about running into a "Me Monster," a guy he doesn't even know who is doing all the talking for everyone else.
We don’t often hear of Apelles or the Christians who lived in the household of Aristobulus. Most of us read quickly past these names and never give much thought to who they were or what their role was in the church at Rome. Yet, to Paul, they were important enough to be mentioned in his letter to the Romans. This tells us that in Christ’s service, the “little guys” are as important as the “all-stars.”
Ministry
Sport
Book of the Bible
FCA Bible Topic