We Are Witnesses

I was at the Cavs game the night LeBron hit the 3-pointer with 1 second left. It was amazing. I hugged total strangers. We celebrated and yelled until our voices were gone. It seemed hopeless but we had LeBron and we are witnesses. It was a very religious experience. And I mean that with all sincerity. We were broken. The Orlando Magic had mounted their second comeback in as many games and when Hedo Turkoglu hit his shot with one second left to put them up by two all the air went out of the arena. We sat with our brokenness wondering what could ever put us back together again. Then LeBron jumped up and nailed a 30 footer to win the game and we erupted. Our savior had come and we rejoiced together. I stood there with all the others and marvelled that man was made to worship. If we do not worship the true God then we will find something to worship. It may be our jobs, our families, our children, or some athlete but make no mistake we worship. Nike has made the connection with LeBron which is why their marketing tag line is "We are witnesses". I watched the game last night. No one ran up to me today to celebrate LeBron. His eight turnovers in the fourth quarter and overtime helped Orlando put us on ice. This time our savior did not come through and we are witnesses of that as well. Catch me one day and I will sing LeBron's praises, but catch me another day and I will lament his weaknesses. The disciples of Jesus were different. They went to their graves saying things about Jesus that were just mind boggling. Peter, who knew him as well as anyone, said "In Him there is no flaw". Jesus never once let them down. He is always the savior. Today you and I will worship. The question is not whether we will worship but what or who. I want to worship something that is worthy. Jesus stands and offers himself for my brokenness. He did it yesterday and he did it today and he will do it tomorrow. Jesus is the one who had the power to heal what is really broken inside you and me. There is not a day that goes by that I cannot sing his praises. "And God demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were sinners Christ died for us." We are witnesses.

Better Than Tom's Pass

Tom Randall is my good friend. He is the chaplain for the PGA Champions Tour. The PGA Championship is being held at Canterbury this week so I was able to go up with him today and walk around. It was fun to walk around and meet some of the players. Tom has a pass that gets him just about everywhere. He can go into the clubhouse, the locker room, under the ropes to the practice putting green, and on the driving range. He walks around joking and talking with the players. It looked like a blast. I say it looked like a blast because while Tom has a pass that gets him everywhere, that pass gets me nowhere. We tried to get me into the clubhouse and the guy asked me for my pass and that was that. One time we were walking up a path from the driving range and another guy stopped me so I had to walk around another way. Anyway, it was kind of a bummer. It made me think about heaven and walking with Jesus. Jesus' pass works for me as well. Wherever he goes, I can go. Theologians call it "imputed righteousness". It is credit for every good thing that Jesus ever did. It is righteousness that flows out of him onto me. Being around someone like Tom who has a pass starts out being cool and ends up a little lonely. I must have stood outside ropes and gates for at least a couple of hours today. But Jesus is a whole different deal. "This is Joe, He is with me" and in I will go. That's what I was thinking about as I stood outside the players locker room today and now wherever you are waiting you can think about it as well.

We're Talking Practice, Man, Practice

If you are at all tuned into ESPN you have seen the famous interview with Allen Iverson about missing practice. He just kept saying,"We're talking about practice, man, practice, not the game, not the game, practice." I think he says "practice" 14 times during that interview and always in the same disparaging way. I was thinking about it recently. I am in the middle of training to do an event later this summer with my son Jeremy. Someone asked me today if I liked the event or the preparation more. I like the preparation. When I was a basketball player I always loved practice. I had friends who loved the games but hated practice. That meant they missed out on a lot. I was thinking if you are a gardener you really need to like the process if you are going to be a good gardener. Otherwise, you would be like me and just go to the grocery. My guess is gardeners really love every part of preparing, sowing, tending and finally filling up the pantry and the refrigerator with fresh produce. A great gardener loves gardening more than the produce. I love the weekends and the worship services at our church. I love the part I get to play. I also love the process of preparing. I think most of us love it when we are used by God in some way. It is an amazing feeling to be caught up in something bigger than yourself. My guess is we better love the process though. We need to learn to love getting up early every day to spend time with God, to read some of the Bible, and just sit with Him. I think that is the Christian equivalent to practice. If we miss out on that we are missing out on the very best part. I want to continue to love the weekend services and preaching. But I want to love the process even more. The time I spend with God when it is just the two of us is the very best part. I hope it is for you as well.

My Tender Feet Taking Me to the Cross

I have soft feet. I know it sounds like I am bragging but I am not. I am lamenting. I used to play basketball all the time so my feet looked like they belonged to a different species. Now all I do is bicycle so my feet have become soft and girly. I mean girly in that they are soft, they are still hairy and pretty gross looking. I didn't want to lose my masculine readership. Anyway, I have been trying to toughen them up and have been going around barefoot. The other day I get a cut on the bottom of one of my tender toes. I didn't notice at first but after a while it let me know. I have been thinking about the system God has installed of pain. It is a pretty amazing system. I would not have thought of it. The body is populated by millions of little pain sensors. Pain lets me know something is wrong and needs to be addressed. It is true with my toes, it is true with my soul. C.S.Lewis said that God whispers to us in our pleasure but he shouts through our pain. He called it God's megaphone. Almost everyone I know wants to avoid pain and yet it is pain that is my first step back toward wholeness. And we are back to the pattern of the cross. Pain letting us all know something is desperately wrong and then that pain being the first step and necessary step toward wholeness. I like it when I see something that God set up that I would never think of. Something that is a pattern I experience every day that reminds me of the wonder of the cross. So today, be thankful for pain. It is a gift and let the gift of pain remind you of the cross and pull you to the Savior.

Two Sisters

It is tough to find anything that is pure anymore. I buy distilled water and it still says that it only filters out 99% of the impurities after it has experienced reverse osmosis and been hypnotized twice. I have my doubts about my pure Florida orange juice and don't even get me started on free range chicken. The other day I sat in the presence of pure love. Pure love is tough. I mean both tough to find and just down right tough. Normal love always is giving and receiving so there is a rhythm. I love my wife but she loves me right back. That means it is hard for me to tell if I am loving her or loving myself because the rhythm is so faithful. Pure love only really happens when the rhythm is broken. It happens when the giver is no longer given to for whatever reason. I watched it between sisters. One sister is taking care of the other sister. The one has fallen sick. She has cancer and the cancer has slowly but steadily robbed her of things to give. She cannot walk without assistance. Two weeks ago the cancer went into her auditory canals and she lost her hearing. So now she cannot really visit. Communication is slow and lumbering. But the sister who is the caregiver has not missed a beat. She looks at her sister with the same affection. She cares for her and seems to delight in everything. There is a joy when the two are together that is absolutely breathtaking. I went to visit to encourage and pray. I expected it to be sad. I came away marveling. The normal rhythm has been broken but the melody is stronger than ever. It was the sound of love that filled my head and my heart. I have known for a while that my soul longs for that love both to receive it and to give it. Love hit its purest note on the cross. I felt a little like Job where I had heard with my ears but now I had seen the reality and it made me repent. Today I sit in the presence of Jesus and bask in the purest of love. If I am ever going to be the giver of pure love I must first learn to receive it here at the foot of the cross. It is the love of two sisters that taught me this.

The Log In My Eye

I was driving the other day behind some guy who had forgotten to turn his blinker off. At first I thought he was going to turn. Actually I thought that for 4 straight streets in a row. I am a slow learner. Then I realized he was just driving and didn't know. I watched him for a while and thought about how embarrassed he should be. We were just about up to an intersection with several lanes when I thought to check my own blinker just in case by some wild coincidence I was driving and faking right like he had been doing. Sure enough, I was blinking. As I pulled up beside him he smiled at me and waved and turned his blinker off. He had been trying to let me know I was blinking. I felt like the guy with food hanging out of his mouth and everybody around keeps wiping their mouths with their napkin hoping he will finally get the hint. Why is it so hard for me to see myself even when someone in front of me is trying to show me? I thought of Jesus saying to make sure you take the log out of your own eye before you try to do micro surgery on your neighbor's eye. I sheepishly pulled away from the intersection and checked my blinker every 2-3 blocks all the way home. I wonder how many other things I would pick up about myself if when I looked at other people instead of thinking how silly they were used them as a mirror. Do I really think I have fewer faults than the people all around me? Scripture says God made us out of the dust of the ground. We are all made of the same stuff. The really amazing thing is that God loves this little mound of dust. He loves you too. Don't forget. It will be good to remember the next time you get out of your car and the gas nozzle is hanging out of your gas tank.

My Dad and Me

It struck me the other day that my Dad never really had a Dad. His Dad died when he was around 5 years old and he basically grew up with his Mom and two older sisters. That means that when he took me to Yankee stadium as a little boy and we walked out and I saw my first big league ballpark he was breaking new ground. All the times we played catch in the yard, the father/son talks in the car on the way to school, all the advice and laughter and hugs, he was learning as he went. I guess I just find that remarkable. For me, I tried to do all the things for my kids and with my kids my Dad did with me. My Dad will say his whole life changed when he found Jesus and God became the Father he never had. I think it has been much easier for me to be a Dad. A lot of people go through life thinking that they just didn't get the breaks. They never had a real mentor or good parents. They live an "if only" kind of life. One of the really wonderful things about a relationship with God is the amazing ground God can make up. He took a little boy without a Dad, who grew up dirt poor at the end of the depression, and made him into a man that I try my hardest to emulate. I have had all the breaks, my parents made it so and yet it seems like God has done the heavy lifting in their lives to make up for so much they could have or maybe even should have had. The man who has God and everything has no more than the man who has only God. So it was for my Dad, and so it has been for me.