I spent a few hours with one my best friends last week. He is so awesome. Check out Pat Lynn as he continues to heal. Amazing! Share this story with your friends!
1 Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.
2 Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
3 Know that the LORD is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
5 For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.
Over the next month I am going to write a few thoughts and reflections about this great Psalm in preparation for Thanksgiving. This will be a six part series that will look at one or two verses with each post. I want to encourage you to read, reread, meditate and memorize this passage to prepare your heart daily to reflect a life of sincere thanks. I think you will be encouraged as you read each post but I also think you will find yourself being challenged in many areas of your daily life. Let me know what you think and feel free to leave comments.
When it comes to athletic adventures like soccer games I am always the optimist. Even when over-matched and undersized I believe that my teams have a chance to win. I want my players to know that I believe in them even when they have had a rough day on the field, and I never want their rough day on the field to changed my optimism for their athletic future.
Soccer Tribe
A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend of mine about my young soccer tribe and he encouraged me to record my thoughts about maintaining a positive environment on the sideline on an ongoing basis. The following list is from the coaches perspective and is intended to assist parents, coaches, players, grandparents and fans keep it fun on the sidelines for young soccer players.
One final thought would be to encourage you to leverage the passion for soccer that you and your players or children have to do something good in your community or around the world. I’m sure you have had even better ideas that the list above so let me know how you would add to the list. Here’s to your soccer tribe.
The Hippo Roller
In a couple weeks I will be traveling to Swaziland a small land-locked country in South Africa. I am excited about the adventure as well as the possibilities. The purpose of the journey is to lay the ground work for a return trip with a team of friends from the Seattle area next summer.
This will be my first trip to the continent of Africa and as insignificant as I am in the grand scheme of things I want to make a lasting impact in the communities, villages and tribes we visit. Right now I am thinking about leveraging the resources I can gather and the people I know and love in one or more of the following ways. Together we could build a community center, dig a well, develop soccer fields, teach sexual education for families and fund micro enterprise. I think these are all valid ideas but I really want to pull together a coalition that will work together to make an impact beyond simple ideas and a site seeing adventure.
Hopefully the following video will spark creativity and help us think of new ideas for positive change in the heart of South Africa. Hopefully you will be filled with compassion.
I am open to new ideas and creative partnerships so let me know what you think. If we work together we can be part of a small win in South Africa. The idea of a trip like this is to connect the passions we live with on a daily basis to the needs of the world. If we can take the things we love to do here at home to make an impact locally and globally, this is what I call an electric life. Please check out the Hippo Roller information page.
Postmodern Paintbrush
Last night at about 10:30 I went on a walk and stumbled across a poster from the Seattle Art Museum. The poster featured an event called, Target Practice: Painting Under Attack. As I understand it, the idea of the event was to highlight art and artists who creatively stood up to the cultural norm of elevating painters above all other artists. For centuries it seems, painters were revered as the artistic elite giving them (painters) the inside track to cultural influence and also social dominance.
The poster represents what I would call a transitional stage in the artist community. Transitions in the arts community have often led the way to social and cultural reform. The combined images of a box-cutter, hammer and boxing glove each as a paintbrush in their separate contexts tend to mess with the mindset of the establishment. These images force the powers that be to rethink and often redefine the meaning of a paintbrush. New questions arise like, can something other than a paintbrush be categorized or used as a paintbrush? The arts community would say yes to this question. Another question could be, what is a paintbrush?
What is a Paintbrush?
So, what exactly is a paintbrush? A paintbrush, like the boxing glove in the poster is anything that changed or changes the landscape of any culture in any time. Notice that the landscape that changes is nothing like a scene from a Bob Ross painting and the landscape that changes is not on a tightly bound canvas but living, breathing people shaped by a shift in culture. With this definition of a paintbrush as a backdrop, an idea can become a paintbrush, love becomes a paintbrush, books and people become paintbrushes.
As I walked away from the poster I started thinking about the major influences that have changed the landscape of my life. I wondered about the paintbrushes that have shaped who I have become. And then the thought came to me…
Jesus understands postmodern art. His paintbrush was the cross.
How did Jesus change the landscape of history? He did it with the cross, He did it with love, sacrifice and submission. He continues to paint today through grace, forgiveness and redemption. And He continues to do it by transforming people and the culture people love.
If you take another look at the poster you will see a box-cutter, hammer and a boxing glove. As you see these, remember the spear that cut Jesus side, the nails the held Him high and the beating he received at the hands men. He took all this because He was the master artist and saw what the establishment could never see… that a cross would become a paintbrush.
Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts and reflections.
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