Potpuri

Several things:
1. While I am pleased that the NBA is still dead to me (perhaps mostly dead) I am also pleased to announce that the two teams I picked at the beginning of the playoffs are the two left. I thought it would take the Cavs seven games to beat an aging, fractured shell of a team, and I thought that team would be Miami, but whatever. My pre-playoff prediction was the Spurs in 6 which does not look too bad, though the series could go much quicker than that.
2. Page 2's Mike Philbrick has put together one of the funniest things you may ever see with his ultimate sports movie commencement address. The address itself is funny, but the idea is brilliant.
3. While at Burger King the other night, Josh and I began talking about happy meals, and why we weren't getting any. Once in a while the kids get happy meals and get really excited about it, and sometimes the toys seem worth the money, but on the whole Happy meals just seem wrong somehow. My whole family, sans happy meals, was able to eat for $9.42, or less than $2 a person. This lead us to ask, why is it our other fast food trips are usually in the $12-17 range (for example, earlier that same day we ate at Chick File for a whopping $23.08), and the answer is usually that we are not careful in how we order or what we waste. While I am willing to concede right off the top that the best alternative would be to give up fast food entirely (this is a no brainer, but also a no happener), we have begun to discuss how we might eat more faithfully on the rarer occassions we do eat out. This birthed the idea of restraining from happy meals to raise money for missions. By ordering meals a bit differently, being willing to share fries and drinks, and not buying happy meals, we realized we can save almost $2-5 every time we eat out. The more careful approach to ordering and eating allows us to help stunt some of the consumerism involved in fast food, train them to say no to certain desires, and teaches them to share. Also, by putting the money we save back towards mission we can make a small dent in hunger around the world. Kick this idea around with friends and we'll see how it goes. Also, we could use a really cool name for the idea.

2-0 and recovery

It is now Wednesday, and Man Weekend has now been finished for almost 12 hours. In the future man weekend will be celebrated away from home, with out the extra pressures of work life, and with other family men. I am now in full recovery mode for today, but our Holy Week services begin tommorrow night at 7pm, so there is much to be done. A few random observations:
1. The Brewers are 2-0 again this year. The first game they looked dominant, and their second game they looked dominant in a different way. This is what I love about baseball, the Brewers are going to have at most 15-20 games like their first win, where they score runs at will and the other team can't get hits. But, if their bullpen holds they could 60-70 wins the way they did this game. Last night they got a lead in the sixth, gave the ball to Matt Wise for the 7th, Derrick Turnbow for the 8th and Francisco Cordero for the 9th. Expect to see a variation on this pattern, over and over again.
2. I am geeked about this coming weekend. I confessed to a college group last night that my two "Holy Weeks" conbined this year to demonstrate my idolatries. This confession is true. How often does it happen that the Final Four, Opening Day, the Masters and the Church's Holy Week all fall in the same seven or eight days? Even given that, I am genuinely excited about the Easter services because Josh (my oldest son) is going to go through them with me. We have been praying, reading and talking about baptism for a few weeks now, and so this week he is going to attend the services with me. It is a joy and an amazement to hear how God is working in him.
3. I am also excited about all the other things this weekend. I also pick Tiger at Augusta, and I win about half the time. This Saturday we get to go chill at some of Abby's cousins, which if the weather holds, is certain to include some Pickle Ball, and we get to see Colette celebrate Easter for real the first time- last year she was to young to really participate with other kids.

Resonances and Randomness

A few sort of scattered thoughts from the week so far:
*In Luke 8-9, I have again been impressed with Jesus not distancing himself from Kingdom of God language. Every time he teaches, or sends out disciples, he is "proclaiming the kingdom of God." Also, the story of Legion strikes me as a helpful picture of true conversion. A few verses after Jesus helps drown some pigs, the artist formerly known as legion is sitting at his feet, clothed, and in his right mind. Later as Jesus is trying to leave his new convert wants to follow, but Jesus sends him out to proclaim all the good things God has done. I like that picture a lot, healing, learning, transforming and proclaiming. No formula here, but I would love to see our churches live into this a bit more. Likewise, in chapter 8-9 there is an awful lot of healing connected with the kingdom of God, creating some resonance of Jesus and the scroll of Isaiah. While on resonances, the feeding of the 5,000 in Luke certainly seems to be an attempt to echo and transform the temptation of Satan in the wilderness. Jesus would not turn stones to bread then, but he will feed five thousand hungry people now.
*Talking with my oldest son, Josh, about baptism, renouncing evil, and following Christ. Somehow the discussion goes from theology to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to painters and then back to God. All of which produced this gem from Josh about God being eternal, "God didn't even have to create Himself."
* A really amazing group, known as Invisible Children is working on a new campaign to end the war in Uganda which my church and youth are going to be part of. Its going to be amazing, and if you want to know more go here to check them out.
* This really should not be the last point, but my buddy Greg has a new album coming out in the next few weeks. If you have never heard him before, you will not believe what he can make a guitar do. Anyway, some of his new stuff is amazing. I think I listened to "Dirt Roads" about five times straight through. Good praying music if you're into that sort of thing.

Duke, Debates and Denial

Duke is out. I am a little surprised at how many people are excited about this. I know that it is standard to hate Duke, but now that they are not elite, everyone is coming out of the wood works. It has gotten so bad that even my own Father, who is a lifelong hater of Duke, was pulling for them because so many people picked them to lose. Well, its over, and its sad. It does not destroy my bracket, but does make me unhappy.
It looks like Wallis vs. Dobson may be a go. Dobson has agreed to let his VP take part in the debate, and Wallis has balked, saying he wants Dobson. Wallis also says he has several Christian Universities who would be happy to host the event (maybe they could raise some money for poor people-if poor people really exist). Dobson's reason for not accepting the debate himself? He is taking the next two years to write a book on child rearing. If this book comes out and its just a revised edition of Dare to Discipline or Raising a Strongwilled Child, I am going to shoot someone.
Earlier this week Abby and I put an offer in on a house. That offer was rejected outright, which apparently is a bit uncommon. Anyway, we have chosen not change our offer, so we are once again on the outside of the house buying industry. It feels pretty good.

A great comic strip

This is from one of my favorite strips, and this is a pretty good one. I wonder if this is how most books on youth ministry get written. Have fun:

Its been one week...

and I still hate the BCS. The Badgers have risen through the ranks, but it is going to be a mess by the end of the year. At least two teams in front of the Badgers are guaranteed a loss, with a third team very likely. With that behind me, on to a few random thoughts:

1. Arkansas' Darren McFadden is not the best college football player this year.... he is quite possibly the best football player I have ever seen. I can not recall (even Reggie Bush last year, or Charles Woodson at Michigan) any player ever causing a coach to look the way Fulmer looked near the end of the first half. He looked like a basketball coach, coaching against a guy who you knew was going to get the ball, and you knew there was no way to stop. Along these lines, kudos to the Arkansas coaches who devised a way to make 100% sure McFadden gets the football, namely cut out the QB. Why hand off when you can snap the ball directly to the best player in the country?

2. The coaching situations at the two Wisconsin institutions (Packers and Badgers) are locked up and in good shape for awhile. Beilema has to demonstrate that he can recruit, but outside of that I have really no doubts about either coach. Winning in Iowa with a back-up QB and never abandoning the run even when we were not getting huge bursts...brilliant. I have also learned almost everything I need to know about McCarthy in Green Bay during the last two Sundays. In our loss to the Bills McCarthy made a questionable call that Favre turned into an interception that mostly cost us the game. After the game McCarthy took full responsibility and did not throw any of his players under the bus, but most importantly all of the offensive player pulled the same move and refused to throw their coach under the bus. After three years of watching the exact opposite of this happening, I have been very pleased. Then, he followed that up with a thoroughly unexpected win that has helped the Pack match our win total from last year. A win against the Vikings in the Metrodome is a huge bonus.

3. In a non-sports related note, I want to reccomend this blog, one of my friends who is an aboslutely genius web-designer if you ever need one. Also it turns out he is quite a gifted writer and social critic. Good fun.

peace