Tag: Faithful

Who’s on First?

Who’s on First?

It’s baseball season and anyone who knows me knows that i love baseball. i am a big LA Dodger fan, having grown up in Southern California. i can remember listening to the Dodger games on the radio while watching them on channel 5, because my dad didn’t like the TV commentators. i recall walking through the halls of my high school and Mr. Flores would have a TV in the quad with the Dodger games on. We would stop by between classes to get the score of the game. It was a big deal. Even now i am keeping an eye on the score of the Dodgers game as they take on our arch nemesis, the SF Giants. (Boo, Hiss).

Life can be like a baseball game. Sometimes we get a hit, sometimes even a home-run. Then there are those times we strike out. You know what i like about baseball that is different then other sports? No clock. The game is untimed. It is controlled simply by the flow of the game. Some innings are short, 1, 2, 3 out innings and others can last what seem to be hours as batter after batter battles at the plate, hits are made and runs scored.

In 1 Corinthians 9:23-25 it says;

23 I do everything to spread the Good News and share in its blessings.

24 Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! 25 All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize.

Again this is true in life, whether it is our day to day struggles or sharing our faith. There will be times when we share our faith that we strike out, other times we hit a home-run. Some times we will get a hit and someone else hits the runner in. Our goal is to be faithful. Sometimes our life struggles will feel like a strike out, other times it may feel like you hit a home-run…in the grind of life; Be faithful. Be patient. Be persistent. Be willing, Be loved.

You are Loved,

cj

Hope

Hope

“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” i have said this often but wasn’t sure where it came from; so i did what everyone does when they want to learn new information, i googled it. You know what i found? An amazing poem written by Robert Burns in 1785. Here is the stanza in which this oft` repeated line lays:

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
The poem sheds light on the mental state of Burns, who at the time was only 26 years old. He had a lot going for him, popular, young, well respected, yet still in this and the closing stanza we find a man with a bleak outlook and little hope of change. The author of the biography that i read made this observation, “Not at all what one might expect from a young man of twenty-six, supposedly so popular  with the lassies, and with his whole life ahead of him, but nevertheless expressing sentiments with which many of us today can easily relate.” 

It seems that we do live in a world that in~spite of its many advantages, technologies, entertainments and beauty, we suffer from a lack of, for a lack of a better term, hope. Hope for a future that is better than ones present.

Let me encourage us with this, there is hope, life can get better, and our choice to choose joy and hope over sadness and despair is ours to make. Psalm 65:5 & 78:7 gives a look into true hope…

“You faithfully answer our prayers with awesome deeds, O God our savior. You are the hope of everyone on earth, even those who sail on distant seas.”

“So each generation should set its hope anew on God, not forgetting his glorious miracles and obeying his commands.”

Finally, Matthew writes, “And his name [Jesus] will be the hope of all the world.”

There is HOPE, You are Loved,

cj