As 2008 comes to a close, I can look back at one time as the most difficult part of the year. It came in April with the death of my grandmother. I was able to visit her in the hospital two days before she died, which was a blessing to see her one last time after not seeing her for at least a year. The next weekend I was asked to speak at the memorial service, I agreed without knowing what I would say. Despite the countless speeches and sermons that I had given in the past four or five year, I was in no way prepared, I struggle through the tears and said what I had wanted to say. For a while I was thinking that I should post what I had said but I did not want to reconsider the reality of loss once again. I nevertheless push through that struggle and present it to you.
The Second Century Christian Theologian Iraneus wrote about the Rule of Faith, the idea that those who come before us pass on the faith, for me this heritage of faith is from Ruth Foat, although I call her Grandma. I can still remember as a young child grandma teaching me the books of the Bible, to this day I can remember Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers. It all gets hazy from there but I remember learning it from grandma. Years after learning the names of the books with grandma, the seeds grew into faith. That faith has changed me and led me to where I am today.
I was blessed that last weekend I was able to go visit her in the hospital. She talked to me about being led by the Spirit so that she would have immediate repentance and obedience to the voice of God. Her desire was to be more intimate and to have nothing hindering her journey. I hope that I can grow to that as well.
The thing that inspired me the most in my visit was her love for God’s Word. Since her arrival she had been reading through the New Testament, using a book that showed what the Jewish understanding metaphors and stories. Despite her situation she knew there was more to understand, she earnestly desired to know more about the Scripture to learn more about God. Her faith brought her to seek understanding no matter the circumstance. Her faith impacted every layer of her being, it was not a faith that did not waiver. She affirmed in me an understanding of God that goes beyond simple morality but reached to a solid theology.
In the end she was selfless, her first words to me when I visited were “You do the talking, tell me everything about your studies and your church. It wasn’t about what she could tell me or what was going on with her, she wanted to hear about me. My hope is that I can come to a place in my life where I can have that same attitude.
Today I reflect on a life well lived and worthy of imitation.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
How The Yankees could Ruin Baseball
This winter the New York Yankees have signed the top two pitchers, C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, and the top position player, Mark Texiera. Their robust holiday shopping bill will cost them 423 million dollars over the course of the contracts. This spending by the Yankees has been rivaled by other clubs slashing payroll in an effort to stave off financial disaster.
This offseason's purchases by the Yankees worry me for two reasons, the non-competitve nature of teams in free agency in comparison to the Yankees and the pressure that it puts on teams to find ways to compete with them financially.
The first issue is simply that the despairity in financial resources makes it impossible for small-market teams to compete for championships for more than a one or two year window, with the home-grown talent that will soon leave to play for the Yankees. The Yankees infield will earn more than 21 entire teams this season, that is simply unfair, Major League Baseball needs to see what the NFL has done to take over as the most watched sport in America, parity and the ability of any team no matter the size of the market, i.e. Green Bay, to compete for a championship. (Note: The Detroit Lions do hinder this argument but they are awful because of poor management.)
The second reason that the Yankees offseason scares me is because it takes away from the way the game was meant to be, I know that players don't last entire careers with one tam anymore, but a few would be nice. My biggest worry is that Fenway Park is headed towards danger. It is clear that the Yankees have spent this year and will continue to be able to spend in this manner for years because of their new high revenue ballpark. The problem is their nearest competition in terms of finances is the Red Sox who play in the smallest park in baseball, simoultaneously the one of the most historic parks. My fear is that the Red Sox will find a need to expand Fenway to the point that it is no longer the Fenway that it has always been, a la the spaceship of a stadium that landed at Soldier Field, or that the Red Sox will build a new stadium to be able to have the same revenue. Thus taking away of the best parts of baseball for decades.
Either way the solution is simple, a salary cap.
This offseason's purchases by the Yankees worry me for two reasons, the non-competitve nature of teams in free agency in comparison to the Yankees and the pressure that it puts on teams to find ways to compete with them financially.
The first issue is simply that the despairity in financial resources makes it impossible for small-market teams to compete for championships for more than a one or two year window, with the home-grown talent that will soon leave to play for the Yankees. The Yankees infield will earn more than 21 entire teams this season, that is simply unfair, Major League Baseball needs to see what the NFL has done to take over as the most watched sport in America, parity and the ability of any team no matter the size of the market, i.e. Green Bay, to compete for a championship. (Note: The Detroit Lions do hinder this argument but they are awful because of poor management.)
The second reason that the Yankees offseason scares me is because it takes away from the way the game was meant to be, I know that players don't last entire careers with one tam anymore, but a few would be nice. My biggest worry is that Fenway Park is headed towards danger. It is clear that the Yankees have spent this year and will continue to be able to spend in this manner for years because of their new high revenue ballpark. The problem is their nearest competition in terms of finances is the Red Sox who play in the smallest park in baseball, simoultaneously the one of the most historic parks. My fear is that the Red Sox will find a need to expand Fenway to the point that it is no longer the Fenway that it has always been, a la the spaceship of a stadium that landed at Soldier Field, or that the Red Sox will build a new stadium to be able to have the same revenue. Thus taking away of the best parts of baseball for decades.
Either way the solution is simple, a salary cap.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Don't Mess With...
It seems strange that I am poised to finish my fifth semester of seminary. It seems like just last week that I began classes bright-eyed and excited about how much I would learn about God and understand him more. That attitude did not last long, by the first Greek exam I think I realized that seminary was no Sunday School class, although some classes give disappointing hope that it is, but that seminary was going to drain me both mentally and physically. Shortly after the realization that seminary would not be any walk in the park, my hope of understanding God began to fade as well. This was not because I did not learn about who God is, but because I did learn about him, and realized that there are aspects of God that I cannot reconcile.
The difficult issues of my Christian walk before I came were mostly centered around God's sovereignty. However the issues which I thought could be solved only led to more difficult questions, namely the active and passive will of God. The question became how can an all-powerful being allow something to happen, if he knows that it will happen and can stop it than how is that passive? It is at least actively passive. I sought to understand it, as some form of anthropomorphizing God's character. God's active will seems most troubling in the particularity of his mercy, as shown in his showing mercy to some and wrath to others, based on his own choosing.
This same question of the particularity of God's mercy is discussed in Romans 9 as Paul explains that God loves some and hates others, he will save some and harden others such as Pharaoh. Paul then conjours up a hypothetical objector to this idea. The objector rightly questions how God can do this and still find fault in those who are destined to reject him, because no one can resist God's will. Paul's answer is an answer that has troubled me since I first read Romans 9. "O man, on the contrary, who are you to talk back to God." I always thought it meant that Paul had no answer and responded to the difficulty by only saying that man cannot know.
I now realize that I did not complerely grasp what is happening in this verse. Paul's inference here "O man" is being used idiomatically to say that we are mere men. Thus a mere man cannot talk back to his maker. Now that I have begun to move past my arrogance, which blinded me from seeing what the text was saying because I felt slighted by Paul's response, it has become clear that Paul is not trying to say that man cannot answer the question of God's particulariry but is instead making a statement of what he is willing to messs with. In the grand scheme of theology and anthropology Paul is saying that he would rather mess with man's understanding and position, rather than God's character.
Having been through a few years of seminary now I realize that I cannot understand everything about God, and that no one will ever be able to grasp the fullness of God. With this in mind I have come to agree with Paul that I will not mess with God's character. I will affirm his attributes, but I cannot not ,in any right mind, question who he is. So that now as I consider the difficulty of God's mercy being only shown to those he has chosen, I submit that there is something lacking in my ability to understand, because of my finitude and his infiinitude. I would much rather say that I cannot fully grasp God than to say that there is something wrong with who he is. For even God's foolishness is wisdom to me.
The difficult issues of my Christian walk before I came were mostly centered around God's sovereignty. However the issues which I thought could be solved only led to more difficult questions, namely the active and passive will of God. The question became how can an all-powerful being allow something to happen, if he knows that it will happen and can stop it than how is that passive? It is at least actively passive. I sought to understand it, as some form of anthropomorphizing God's character. God's active will seems most troubling in the particularity of his mercy, as shown in his showing mercy to some and wrath to others, based on his own choosing.
This same question of the particularity of God's mercy is discussed in Romans 9 as Paul explains that God loves some and hates others, he will save some and harden others such as Pharaoh. Paul then conjours up a hypothetical objector to this idea. The objector rightly questions how God can do this and still find fault in those who are destined to reject him, because no one can resist God's will. Paul's answer is an answer that has troubled me since I first read Romans 9. "O man, on the contrary, who are you to talk back to God." I always thought it meant that Paul had no answer and responded to the difficulty by only saying that man cannot know.
I now realize that I did not complerely grasp what is happening in this verse. Paul's inference here "O man" is being used idiomatically to say that we are mere men. Thus a mere man cannot talk back to his maker. Now that I have begun to move past my arrogance, which blinded me from seeing what the text was saying because I felt slighted by Paul's response, it has become clear that Paul is not trying to say that man cannot answer the question of God's particulariry but is instead making a statement of what he is willing to messs with. In the grand scheme of theology and anthropology Paul is saying that he would rather mess with man's understanding and position, rather than God's character.
Having been through a few years of seminary now I realize that I cannot understand everything about God, and that no one will ever be able to grasp the fullness of God. With this in mind I have come to agree with Paul that I will not mess with God's character. I will affirm his attributes, but I cannot not ,in any right mind, question who he is. So that now as I consider the difficulty of God's mercy being only shown to those he has chosen, I submit that there is something lacking in my ability to understand, because of my finitude and his infiinitude. I would much rather say that I cannot fully grasp God than to say that there is something wrong with who he is. For even God's foolishness is wisdom to me.
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